


The Little Red Balloon

by jehans



Series: The Little Red Balloon [1]
Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies), Winter Soldier (Comics)
Genre: Abusive Language From An Abuser, Addiction, All Stucky, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Alternate Universe - No Powers, Bisexual Bucky Barnes, Bisexual Steve Rogers, Bottom Bucky Barnes, Bottom Steve Rogers, Bottoming from the Top, Brief mention of homophobia, Bucky Barnes Recovering, Digital Art, Dissociation, Dom/sub Play, Drug Use, Falling In Love, General Winter Soldier Abuse Umbrella, HYDRA sucks, Happy Ending, Hurt/Comfort, Idiots in Love, Implied/Referenced Past Suicide Attempt, Kidnapping, Love Confessions, M/M, Meet-Cute, Mental Health Issues, Mild Gore, Minor Pepper Potts/Tony Stark, Non-Consensual Drug Use, Other Past Relationship Tags To Be Added, Part Action Thriller, Part Rom-Com, Past Abuse, Past Brainwashing, Past Bucky Barnes/Brock Rumlow, Past Bucky Barnes/Natasha Romanov, Past Domestic Violence, Past Peggy Carter/Steve Rogers, Past Rape/Non-con, Past Steve Rogers/Tony Stark, Past Torture, Recovery, Switching, Temporary Break Up, Threats of Rape/Non-Con, Threats of Violence, Top Bucky Barnes, Top Steve Rogers, Transgender Characters, brief mention of transphobia, mental health support
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-01
Updated: 2020-11-29
Packaged: 2021-03-08 18:41:26
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 27
Words: 151,807
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27321379
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jehans/pseuds/jehans
Summary: When Steve goes out to a bar looking for a chance to unwind, he doesn’t expect to find the most beautiful person in world there. And he doesn’t expect for that person’s kiss to feel like the missing puzzle piece in his life. And hereallydoesn’t expect to find himself falling head over heels for that person — for Bucky Barnes — over the next two months, watching as the rest of his life with this man stretches out in front of him.But Bucky has secrets. Things he won’t tell. And he just wants to live his life in peace, and do what he can to give kids like him the kind of help he never had. But there are things you can’t outrun. And when his past catches up with him, Bucky will do anything to keep Steve safe from the monsters that lurk in the shadows of his life.But Steve would do anything for him, too. And he’s not about to let Bucky slip away.This is what happens when an unstoppable force meets an immovable object. When fate collides with choice. And when the deepest love confronts the worst kind of fear.This is what happens when Steve Rogers meets Bucky Barnes.
Relationships: James "Bucky" Barnes/Steve Rogers, Natasha Romanov/Sam Wilson
Series: The Little Red Balloon [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2031547
Comments: 480
Kudos: 237
Collections: Not Another Stucky Big Bang 2020





	1. One: July 31st

**Author's Note:**

> IT'S HERE!! Welcome welcome one and all to my absolutely monstrous contribution to the **2020 (Not) Another Stucky Big Bang!** This story began as a oneshot, and quickly got entirely out of control. It now clocks in at approximately 150k words, officially coming in as the longest work I've ever finished in my entire life.
> 
> Thank you, thank you, THANK YOU to my absurdly talented artist, [ArtDiwey](https://twitter.com/ArtDiwey), for picking me, and for the incredible, amazing, GORGEOUS art you've created for this fic, and to my supportive and hilarious beta, [fingerprintbruises](https://archiveofourown.org/users/fingerprintbruises/), for all the late nights, the much-needed cheerleading, the MANY commas, and all of your wonderful contributions to this Stephen King novel-length fic. I could not be more thrilled with this team, I have ADORED working with you two, and I am so deeply excited for everyone to see what we've made together!
> 
> Many, many thanks, also to [bicappy](https://twitter.com/bicappytweets) for your work sensitivity reading the trans characters in this story, and to [need_more_meta](https://archiveofourown.org/users/need_more_meta) for making the Russian accurate!
> 
> This fic would not be what it is (in fact it definitely would not be complete and here at all!) without my team, the (n)asbb discord server at large, and the wonderful mods of this excellent Big Bang. Thank you ALL, so very much! This experience has been so wonderful, and exactly everything I've needed over this horror story of a year.
> 
> What started as a meet-cute oneshot somehow became a story about trauma recovery, support, and learning how to find the value in yourself despite everything you've been through. It's my magnum opus. **Thank you SO much for reading** , and to everyone who leaves a comment or two. I appreciate you immensely!
> 
> You can find me at [@apblaidd](https://twitter.com/apblaidd) on twitter if you want to yell with me about how in love these boys are. 🎈

🎈

Steve needs a chance to unwind. Work has been awful lately. He’s been getting blowback from the NYPD Commissioner after his recent story digging into connections between a Brooklyn precinct and a white supremacist gang in Red Hook, and Fury, Steve’s editor-in-chief, may stand behind him, but he’s still catching a lot of flak, and he’s under a lot of pressure, and he’s barely been sleeping. So, reasonably, he probably should go home and go to bed. But _god_ is he tightly wound right now, and he needs a drink, and, hopefully, a fuck.

So when he pushes his chair back into his desk at half-past nine at night, and waves a goodbye to Natasha, still at hers, he swings his jacket on over his shoulders, and heads out to the fancy hipster bar down the street from his apartment.

As soon as he’s through the door, Steve starts scanning the room. He’s actively trying _not_ to look predatory, but if he’s honest with himself, he _is_ on the hunt.

Unfortunately, it looks like he got here too late. Even though it’s barely ten, most of the people here are already pretty wasted, and Steve would never try to pick someone up who was that far gone. There are a few people scattered around who look like they’re still only one or two drinks in, but most of them are already flirting with someone else, or just don’t seem to be interested in him. Which is fine. They don’t have to be.

But then.

 _Oh_.

There’s a guy sitting at the bar by himself, casually drinking a beer. He’s got long, silky brown curls that are half tied up, showing off his pretty, angular face. His dark, cuffed slim jeans and sheer blue shirt, half unbuttoned already, are giving Steve ideas. Steve is across the room from him, but as he glances over in Steve’s direction, Steve can see from here that his eyes are steel blue.

He’s the most gorgeous person Steve has ever seen, and when their eyes meet, and the man’s mouth twitches into a small, crooked smile, something warm and dangerous pools in the base of Steve’s belly.

Steve makes a beeline for him.

“Hey,” he murmurs (or as much of a murmur as he can muster while still talking over the noise of the bar) as soon as he reaches the man, who watched him cross the room with hungry eyes. Steve offers a hand. “I’m Steve. Can I buy you a drink?”

The gorgeous man accepts the handshake with a smile. “Hi there, Steve,” he answers, and the husky depth of his voice _does things_ to Steve. “Bucky. And yes, you can.”

Steve grins, a childish feeling of accomplishment lighting him up and reddening his face as he tries not to grin _too_ dopey.

He turns to the bartender, and indicates the mostly-empty bottle Bucky’s fingers are gently caressing the neck of. “Two more, please? Thank you.”

“Mm,” Bucky hums, sizing Steve up in a way that makes Steve’s blush deepen. “Polite to bartenders. Good sign.”

“My ma raised me right,” Steve replies, trying to sound cool even though inside he’s already become a fluttery, gooey mess under this man’s sultry gaze. Jesus Christ. What is _happening_ to him?

The bartender places the beers in front of them and takes Steve’s card, nodding when Steve tells her to keep his tab open.

Bucky shifts just a little, moving his left arm, which until now has been tucked into himself with just the elbow resting gently on the bar. And how Steve didn’t notice this before he has no idea, but the glint of light Bucky’s arm catches alerts him to it now: Bucky’s left arm is made of some kind of metal.

It’s his whole arm, too, including his shoulder, visible through the sheer fabric of his shirt, so Steve really should have noticed it already. Apparently, he was too distracted by Bucky’s utter, entrancing beauty up until now, but the thing is — his arm is fucking gorgeous, too. It’s a dark grey metallic, clearly mechanical — some sort of cybernetic enhancement — and the tech is absolutely stunning. The way it moves so naturally, shifts with his movements. It’s beautiful.

“Ex-military,” Bucky says suddenly, snapping Steve out of his trance.

Steve blinks. It doesn’t make sense out of context, and his mind searches for a reason behind the statement. “Sorry?” he asks dumbly, as Bucky’s cybernetic arm circles delicate fingers around his new drink, and he takes a small, careful sip through full, slack lips.

When he’s done, those lips (Steve wants to _do things_ to those lips) quirk again into a little crooked smile. “How I lost my arm,” he explains.

Steve startles again. “Oh god, sorry, no, I wasn’t—” he starts, but then: “Hang on, ex-military?”

Bucky sighs, and rolls his eyes. “I know, I know, I don’t match the type—”

“Me too,” Steve cuts him off.

Buck stops and gives him another, different kind of appraising look. “Army?” he asks.

Steve nods. “Yeah.”

They look at each other a moment, a collective, _Huh._ Then Bucky sticks out his hand to shake Steve’s again.

“Sergeant James Barnes,” he reintroduces himself.

Steve shakes his hand. “Nice to meet you, Sergeant,” he says, grinning. “Captain Steven Rogers.”

Bucky whistles, low. “ _Captain_ , huh?” he asks.

Steve shrugs it off. He’s not the kind of guy who like to wave his military title around like a badge of honor, especially nine years after having left the army behind for good.

Instead, he says, “I shouldn’t have been staring at your arm, I apologize—”

“I don’t really mind, Cap,” Bucky starts to assure him, but Steve keeps going.

“—I wasn’t actually wondering how you lost it, though,” he tells Bucky. “I gotta admit, I was admiring the tech.”

Which makes Bucky laugh loudly, a gorgeous, bright laugh that Steve wants to hear again and again.

“Oh, you’re a _nerd!_ ” he cries, realizing, which pulls a big, booming laugh out of Steve in turn.

“Yeah,” he confesses, “I guess I am.”

“Lucky for you, so am I,” Bucky tells him, setting down his beer again and lifting his arm, turning it back and forth to show it off. “It’s Wakandan tech,” he tells Steve proudly. “State of the art.”

“No shit,” Steve breathes, impressed. “I thought for sure it was Stark.”

Bucky snorts. “Please. Stark could never.”

Steve cracks up at that, and decides not to tell Bucky just yet that Tony Stark is a personal friend of his. Bucky is goddamn _delightful_.

“So how'd you manage to get Wakandan tech as a prosthetic?” Steve asks when he’s composed himself enough.

Bucky actually blushes, which is _adorable, fuck_. “I, uh…,” he stutters. “The king is, um…a close friend of mine.” He waves off the end, as though trying to make it sound casual that he’s tight with a sovereign ruler.

Steve’s eyes widen. “No _shit!_ ” He’s somehow stumbled across the most interesting, most attractive person in the world.

“Look,” Bucky is saying, shaking his head, “you don’t have to believe me—”

“Why would I not believe you?” Steve interrupts.

Bucky gives him a look. “Because I’m a _stranger?_ ” he points out. “Because I could absolutely be bullshitting to get in your pants?” And then Bucky gives Steve this look that seems to say, _I would, too,_ and Steve’s entire face flushes with heat that spreads all the way down his neck and across his chest.

“Mm,” he hums, hopefully still appearing outwardly cool, “I don’t think you are, though. Are you?”

Bucky’s eyes narrow. “No.”

“Okay, then.” Steve takes a sip of his beer. The cold bubbles tingle in his throat, helping to ground him a little.

Bucky keeps his narrowed eyes on Steve like he’s not sure what to think about him right now. He pulls out his phone, and opens a picture that is clearly from some kind of family occasion, showing it to Steve despite Steve’s honest trust in him.

It’s the best picture Steve has ever seen in his life. The King of Wakanda is sitting on the floor next to Bucky, whose hair is much shorter, cropped on the sides, with a mess of curls on top. Both are in their pajamas, holding wrapped presents in their laps, and both are laughing.

“Our birthdays are like two months apart,” Bucky tells Steve, a fond smile tugging at his mouth as he looks at the picture, “but our moms always insist on celebrating them together when we can. We’re both in our thirties now and they still do it. Although, I haven’t made it out the last few years.”

“This is the best picture I’ve ever seen in my life.” Steve laughs, delighted. It’s ridiculously adorable, these grown men looking like children, looking so _happy_. He doesn’t think he could be more attracted to this man if he tried. “How the hell are you so close to the monarch of the most technologically advanced nation in the world?”

Bucky chuckles, putting his phone back in his pocket. “I’m gonna tell Shuri you said that, it’s gonna make her happy.” He takes another drink, finishing his beer. “And it’s a long story.”

Steve makes blatant eyes at him, looking him up and down in a way he hopes gets his message across. “I look forward to hearing it someday.”

Apparently it works. Bucky’s face lights up in the prettiest blush Steve has ever seen. His lips slowly pull into a smile.

After a moment, Bucky looks around the bar. “God, am I ancient, or is it ridiculously loud in here?” he asks.

Steve grins. “Both, probably. You wanna get out of here? Go take a walk?”

It’s Bucky’s turn to make eyes at Steve. “Yeah, all right,” he says after a pause. “I’m down.”

Steve’s heartbeat goes crazy. He waves to the bartender to close out his tab, and makes sure he pays for Bucky’s previous beer as well, before they both head outside.

The cool night breeze feels like a relief on Steve’s warm face. He always feels warm when he drinks — even though he barely finished one beer — but especially when there’s a really hot guy walking close enough to brush against his arm. The streets are still alive with activity — something about the city never sleeping, Steve supposes. Always awake, always alive. He doesn’t know what he’d do without it, really.

Bucky bumps into him gently. “You wanna walk me to my train?” he asks.

It’s definitely embarrassing how fast Steve’s heart drops. “Does that mean you’re going home?” He knows the disappointment is evident in his voice. Unfortunately, he’s not great at hiding his feelings.

But Bucky smiles at him, big and genuine. “Not just yet,” he answers.

The relief has got to light Steve’s face up like a beacon, and he can’t help the grin that splits his face. “Oh,” he breathes. “Okay, then.”

Bucky turns to start walking again, and Steve falls in step beside him. A block passes them by in nervous, anticipatory silence. Steve wants to talk to this guy forever, for as long as he can, but suddenly he can’t think of anything to say. Bucky’s hands are in his pockets, but the close proximity of his arm to Steve’s is radiating energy even through Steve’s jacket. He wants so badly to touch Bucky, to close that gap.

He’s just not sure how to do it.

Eventually, Bucky slows to a stop next to a flight of stairs leading down below the street level to a subway station. He turns to Steve, and leans back against the railing, almost an invitation.

Steve smiles, and huffs out a breath. He really should be smoother than this, he thinks to himself, why did he have to be such a big, dumb dork?

But Bucky’s eyes are gentle as they look Steve up and down.

“I really thought you were gonna make a move,” he says teasingly, and it’s almost sly, but it’s too soft. Like Bucky’s also nervous.

A slow smile creeps across Steve’s face. “You want me to?” he asks, and he lands just short of casual, too.

Bucky’s tongue ghosts over his own lips as his eyes flick down to Steve’s.

“Yeah,” he whispers. “Yeah, I wouldn’t mind that at all.”

So Steve carefully crosses the few steps left between them, reaching out to lay one hand gently on Bucky’s hip, the other ghosting up to just barely cradle his face, and _god_ , Bucky’s eyes flutter shut as his face turns into Steve’s hand just a little. Steve could fall in love with him like this, and he doesn’t even know this man. But he wants to.

 _God_ does he want to.

Bucky’s lips are full and round and pink, and Steve can’t stand not kissing them anymore — so he kisses them.

Bucky’s mouth immediately opens to Steve’s, drawing him deeper into the kiss, his arms slipping easily around Steve’s waist and pulling him closer, until their bodies are pressed against each other, sharing heat.

Steve is pretty sure this is the fastest he’s _ever_ gone from meeting someone to kissing them, but he’s never in his life felt this comfortable touching anyone, let alone a stranger. Bucky is a _really_ good kisser, gently sucking at Steve’s lower lip, and worrying it between his teeth, carefully exploring Steve’s mouth with his tongue until Steve is breathless with want.

“Is this okay?” Bucky asks against Steve’s mouth as his hands slide down to cup Steve’s ass, and Steve nods vigorously before Bucky squeezes, pulling him even closer. It’s _so_ okay. Nothing has ever been more okay.

The hand Steve had resting on Bucky’s hip has dragged up over his defined abs, over his chest with his first two fingers teasingly ducking inside Bucky’s shirt for a moment, until Steve slips his arm over Bucky’s shoulder, letting it rest there, outstretched, as he pulls at Bucky’s neck with his other hand, trying to somehow bring him closer still. He can feel Bucky’s growing arousal through his jeans, which means Bucky can _for sure_ feel Steve’s rock-hard boner, too.

Steve gasps for air as their lips part just to frantically come together again while Steve’s breath rushes out through his nose. “Do you wanna—” he pants in the brief space between kisses that he can’t, won’t stop giving and taking, “—come home with me?” Steve wants, wants, _wants_ Bucky. “Or I can come home with you—?” he offers right before their mouths crash into each other again.

Bucky huffs into Steve’s mouth. “I want to,” he answers, both reluctance and desire evident in his voice. Another kiss, and then, “ _God_ , I really want to….” He presses his pelvis even more against Steve’s, as though to show him how much.

One more kiss before Steve stops to look into Bucky’s eyes, because it sounds like he’s about to hear a no and he doesn’t want to push.

Bucky continues, “But I actually…,” he makes a grunty _mm_ noise that makes Steve just want to figure out how to get him to make that noise _all the time_ in bed, “… _like_ you. A _lot_. And that doesn’t happen for me very often.” He’s being vulnerable, and Steve wants to give him everything. “So…I mean, maybe we could—?”

“Go out with me?” Steve jumps in desperately.

Bucky lets out another little huff, like a laugh this time. “Yeah,” he says, “that’s what I was thinking.”

Steve shakes his head. “No, really,” he presses, shameless, “will you _please_ go out with me?”

Which makes Bucky laugh for real. “Fuck yes, I will, Steve Rogers,” he says, and Steve’s whole face blushes warm again in delight as he presses in to kiss Bucky’s gorgeous neck.

“Okay,” he murmurs against his skin, “let me take you to breakfast.”

This time, Bucky’s laugh is loud and surprised. And Steve _loves_ making him laugh, wants to do it forever.

“I can’t, Cap,” Bucky moans regretfully as Steve scrapes his teeth gently over the soft, delectable skin of Bucky’s throat. “Sex too soon, it—it doesn’t go well for me. I’ve got a bad track record, and I’m trying to make it better.”

Steve sighs, and presses one more chaste kiss to Bucky’s neck before lifting his head.

“Okay,” he says, twirling one of Bucky’s soft curls once around his finger before placing it gently back against his shoulder, “I understand, I do.”

He starts to pull away, but Bucky’s hold on him tightens defiantly, keeping him close.

“We can go as slow as you want,” Steve tells him earnestly, and leans in to kiss his mouth again, slow and deliberate this time. “I mean it, okay?”

But Bucky gives him this look like he maybe doesn’t believe that. Steve feels a jolt in his chest as he suddenly worries what kind of people have said something like that to Bucky before.

Bucky pauses a moment, hesitating, before he tells Steve, “I’m not rejecting you.”

Steve nods. “I know you’re not,” he answers, and means it. “I’m fine with this, Bucky, I really am.”

Bucky lets out a soft little heartbreaking noise, but then reaches into Steve’s back pocket, pulling out Steve’s phone and handing it to him.

“Unlock,” he says simply, and Steve obeys.

Bucky takes the phone back, holding it between them as he taps quickly on the keyboard with both hands. Steve watches, marveling at how sensitive the metal of his prosthetic must be to work so seamlessly on a touch screen.

“This is my number,” Bucky explains. “Use it.”

When he’s done typing, he lifts up his own phone, screen forward, so Steve can see the text of one random emoji that Bucky has sent himself so he has Steve’s number, too.

And Steve doesn’t need the reassurance that Bucky is so deliberately trying to give him, he really doesn’t. Bucky could softly reject him if he needed to, and Steve would be sad, sure, but he would absolutely understand. But the confirmation that he’s _not_ makes Steve’s heart flutter.

“Text me tonight,” Bucky commands firmly, handing Steve back his phone. “And call me tomorrow. And we’ll go out.”

“I will text you the second you leave,” Steve promises. He’s not generally one for playing hard-to-get, and especially not with someone like this man pressed against him. He looks down at his phone to quietly marvel at the new saved contact. Bucky put his name in as just _Bucky_ , no last name, followed by the same emoji he sent himself — the little red balloon.

When Steve glances back up at Bucky, hearts in his eyes, Bucky grins at him. He leans in to kiss Steve again, slow and wanting, one hand resting on the center of his chest.

When their lips part, Bucky lingers by his mouth. “See that you do,” he whispers.

And then he pushes himself up, and Steve goes with him. They stand there a moment, inches from each other, and Bucky raises his Wakandan tech arm to wave a little awkwardly. A little tenderly.

“‘Night, Steve.”

“Goodnight, Bucky,” Steve answers, also a little awkward. He’s not sure what to do, wants to keep kissing and touching and exploring Bucky’s whole body, but also wants to not pressure Bucky into anything, wants Bucky to be comfortable and safe and happy.

But Bucky sucks his own lower lip between his teeth and grins dopily, cheeks sprouting another pretty blush, and Steve throws awkwardness to the wind, reaching out to grab Bucky’s face between his hands and yank him back to kiss him. Hard. Bucky’s entire being rushes up to respond.

And if, when they separate again a minute or so later, Bucky looks a little swoony, and even pinker than before, well then, that’s just an added bonus, isn’t it?

Bucky giggles adorably as he turns away and starts down the stairs. Five or six steps down, he stops and turns back to Steve, a dopey smile plastered all over his face, and he raises his arm to wave again. Then he giggles like a child one more time before he turns and takes the rest of the stairs down to the station.

Steve watches him go until he’s out of sight.

_Goddamn._

As soon as Steve can’t see any more trace of Bucky, he opens his phone and immediately sends him a text.

**[Steve (11:21pm)]** Wait come back I wanna kiss you more

Somehow, by God’s great mercy, Bucky isn’t totally out of range yet, because Steve gets a text back right away.

**[Bucky** 🎈 **(11:21pm)]** dork.

Then, right after:

**[Bucky** 🎈 **(11:21pm)]** hold onto that feeling for me

**[Steve (11:22pm)]** Long as you want me to

Steve is _so_ fucked. And he’s _thrilled_.

🎈

_**art:** Steve and Bucky kiss and get handsy by the subway stairs. **art by:** ArtDiwey_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **Next time:**   
> 


	2. Two: August 3rd

“He’s _so hot_ , look!”

Sam sighs, and closes his eyes for a moment, a silent prayer for strength, before he picks up his mug of freshly-brewed coffee, and turns from the open-plan kitchen back to the sofa. There, his best friend and roommate is leaning over the back of the couch with his arm outstretched toward Sam to shine his phone screen at him. Steve’s phone is alight with the Instagram page of the boy he met the other night, and made out with, and has been chattering about non-stop ever since.

Sam reaches out to patiently take the phone from Steve, but raises his eyebrows, genuinely impressed, as he scrolls through the pictures. “Oh, damn,” he mutters appreciatively. “He a thot.”

Steve grins, absolutely delighted by Sam’s approval. “And he’s so smart, Sam, he’s like, brilliant,” Steve gushes. “And he’s _funny_ , and he’s so _hot!”_

“You know my stance on dudes, Rogers,” Sam says, and Steve snorts and nods. He absolutely knows Sam ‘I’m not saying I _wouldn’t_ , I’m just saying I _haven’t’_ Wilson’s stance on dudes. “But _him_ , I would.”

Steve’s eyebrows shoot up in wonder. “Wow,” he whistles as Sam hands him his phone back. “Is that the first guy you’ve actually felt that way about?”

Sam shoots Steve an incredulous look at that as he circles the couch to sit back down next to Steve. “No, dumbass,” he says bluntly, “ _you_ were.”

Oh. Right.

That’s how Steve and Sam met, actually. At a mutual friend’s party, they’d hit it off, and then gotten just drunk enough for Sam to admit to out-and-loud Steve that, while he had never really felt much attraction to guys before, he was recently feeling curious about what it would be like to be with one. And Steve, being himself a raging bisexual, was totally down to make out with this hot, awesome guy for _science reasons_ , and had taken Sam home with him.

They’d gone far enough that night that Steve knows what Sam’s dick tastes like, but when it came down to the idea of penetration, Sam had realized he wasn’t quite ready for that, and that he wasn’t quite ready for anything more than experimenting with friends, and that he wasn’t quite into Steve enough to want to actually date him. The chemistry just wasn’t there for him, and Steve had been happy with that. Happy that he’d had company for the night, happy that fooling around with Sam had been genuinely fun, and especially happy that the next day, they found themselves easily laughing about it over coffee. It wasn’t a big thing, and he had found his best friend through it, so what the hell would Steve have to regret about it?

And it’s not that he forgets he and Sam ever had sex — although it _was_ so long ago, it sometimes seems fake to him — it’s more that he forgets that Sam was actually _attracted_ to him to begin with, and not just looking for a way to find out how gay he really was.

Not that Steve would have minded either way.

As Sam sips at his coffee, Natasha comes out of the bathroom, toweling her hair.

“Are you really still talking about your new boyfriend?” she asks Steve before plonking down on the armchair and lifting her feet up to rest them on the coffee table. “You wouldn’t shut up all morning, I’m actually genuinely shocked Fury didn’t bring you into his office to yell at you that we have ‘stories that need writing.’” The last few words are said in that perfect impression Nat does of their editor-in-chief, Nick Fury, that never fails to make Steve laugh.

“Shut up,” Steve tells her with very little conviction. “He’s not my boyfriend. _Yet_.”

“Jesus Christ,” Sam groans.

“I can’t help it!” Steve protests. “He’s _so hot!”_

Sam and Nat join in with him on the last two words, sing-song and mocking, and Steve glares at them both.

“Listen,” he says, defensive, but they both laugh at him. “Come on!” Steve whines back at them. “I’m going out with him for the first time tonight, and I’m _nervous,_ and _excited,_ and I have a lot of sexual energy I have to get out before I see him so I don’t try to immediately jump his bones!”

“Well don’t look at us,” Nat tells him. “Sam’s been there, done that, and I really see you as more of a brother.”

Steve opens and closes his mouth a few times in protest as Sam cracks up.

“I wasn’t saying—! Jesus, you two are the worst,” Steve gives up, crossing his arms petulantly, and sinking down into the couch to sulk.

The two of them finally ease up on him at that as Sam says, “Come on, don’t be like that. You know we’re just teasing.”

“Yeah,” Nat agrees, leaning forward to pat Steve’s knee, only a little condescendingly. “We’re both really happy for you, Steve.”

Steve is tempted to keep sulking. To actually make them both feel guilty, as penance for teasing him. But right then, his phone buzzes and lights up, and Steve loses all semblance of grumpiness because it’s a text from Bucky.

**[Bucky** 🎈 **(3:58pm)]** i’m losing my mind. i’m usually so much better at dating than this lol. but i absolutely CANNOT pick so i need you to. which for our date tonight?

Accompanying the text is a picture Bucky took of himself in his bathroom mirror. His eyes are downcast, looking at his phone screen, and his left hand is raised in a halfhearted peace sign. His beautiful long curls are pulled up into a haphazard bun on top of his head, but there are lots of little escapee curls drifting over his face and neck.

He’s absolutely fucking gorgeous. Steve could stare at this picture for hours, at the slopes and lines of Bucky’s body, the way his dark hair catches the bathroom lights, the metallic shine of his left arm — this picture deserves to be in the Louvre.

But then it’s quickly followed by a second picture — same pose, but a different shirt — and Steve remembers he’s supposed to be choosing something, presumably the shirt, and not mentally curating famous French art museums around photographs of Bucky Barnes.

The first is a fitted, long-sleeve button down in a dark teal color, scattered all over with little bunches of rosettes in light pink and mint green. It fits Bucky so well, Steve suspects he’s had it tailored, and he’s only buttoned it up to the top of his rib cage, which is deeply appealing.

The second, though, is perfection itself. It’s another mesh shirt, like the one Bucky was wearing when they met at the bar the other night, but this one is even more see-through. The seams suggest it’s a black mesh, but you wouldn’t know it from just looking at it. The only thing really covering Bucky’s torso at all are the bright, embroidered poppies littered over the fabric.

Steve taps back his response quickly.

**[Steve (4:00pm)]** The mesh, definitely the mesh. God you’re so fucking hot, can you not? I’m trying to be a gentleman here. I choose option 2

Bucky’s reply comes right away, which, Steve thinks with a thrill, means he’s waiting with his phone.

**[Bucky** 🎈 **(4:00pm)]** lol that’s just because you can see my nipples through it

**[Steve (4:00pm)]** 100% yes that is absolutely the reason

**[Bucky** 🎈 **(4:00pm)]** 😂 perv

**[Steve (4:01pm)]** Again, yes

**[Steve (4:01pm)]** I like the hair btw

**[Bucky** 🎈 **(4:01pm)]** don’t worry i’ll do something with it before our date lol

**[Steve (4:01pm)]** No I mean it! It’s really sexy

**[Bucky** 🎈 **(4:02pm)]** 😉

**[Steve (4:02pm)]** I’m not coming on too strong am I? You can tell me if I am.

**[Bucky** 🎈 **(4:02pm)]** not at all baby. i like it.

**[Steve (4:02pm)]** Oof. You’re doing things to me

**[Bucky** 🎈 **(4:02)]** good 😘

Steve looks up, thinking he might have to go find some privacy with the way his cheeks are turning red and his dick is starting to twitch, but to his surprise, both Sam and Natasha have left him alone. He didn’t even notice when they stood up.

Steve spins around to look over the couch at the two of them, chatting in the kitchen. Nat is perched up on the counter that Sam is leaning on. Steve is pretty sure they’ve been flirting with each other lately, a suspicion that seems to be confirmed by the way Nat has one eyebrow teasingly cocked at Sam over the lip of her coffee mug, and Sam is jutting his chest out like a peacock.

Not that Steve has _any_ right to judge here.

He’s actually rather delighted by the whole thing. Sam and Nat would be super cute together, and even if all they want is to fuck, he suspects they’d be well matched at that, too.

“Hey, guys,” Steve calls softly to them, and both Sam and Natasha turn to look at him. “I’m gonna go start getting ready for my date.”

“Already?” Sam asks, checking his watch, and then the time on the microwave to be sure. “You’ve got like three hours, man.”

“I know, but I’m anxious,” Steve tells him. “Getting ready will help me calm down.”

“Okay,” Sam says, his features suddenly soft. “Let me know if you need me, okay?”

Steve nods. He will.

Sam is a counselor at the VA, and he’s excellent at his job. He’s helped Steve with some of his mental health issues before, but he knows when to stay out of it when Steve needs to put up boundaries. He’s incredibly emotionally perceptive, and it’s both impressive and, occasionally, very annoying.

“Thanks for the shower,” Nat says to Steve, waving as he stands up. They both had a half-day at work today, and Natasha has plans nearby later, so she came home with Steve to use his shower because she felt ‘gross’ after being on assignment all morning.

She’s over here enough, being close friends with both Steve and Sam, that at some point a few years ago, Steve opened one of his dresser drawers to find several outfits’ worth of Nat’s clothes, neatly folded and tucked in next to his. At the time, he just shrugged, and accepted that that drawer was half hers. By now, she’s commandeered the rest of that drawer, and one of Sam’s, and she regularly comes to use the shower, or watch TV, or even stay the night on the couch if she’s too tired to make the trip back to her place in Bay Ridge, which can sometimes take up to an hour during peak times.

Steve waves back. “Anytime,” he answers. “I know you’d just break in and use it anyway.”

Nat, who has a key, but would absolutely still break in, winks and salutes him with two fingers.

When Steve gets into his bedroom with a locked door behind him, he immediately drops his pants, and falls back onto his bed. His eyes close as he settles in on the image of Bucky in that see-through floral shirt and absolutely nothing else, on his back underneath him. That’s all it takes for his erection to grow, and he starts gently stroking himself.

He wouldn’t usually masturbate right before a date like this, but Steve knows his sex drive is high, even for a man his age, and he also knows Bucky wants to take things slow. If he doesn’t want to be trying to hide a raging boner all through dinner tonight, he needs to release some of his horniness now.

So he does.

Steve bounces on the balls of his feet, a cacophony of nervous energy, as he waits outside his favorite semi-fancy restaurant for Bucky to appear. He feels like a teenager. Hasn’t been this nervous about a date since then, he figures. But Bucky isn’t just someone he met at a bar — although, technically, Bucky _is_ someone he met at a bar. The chemistry they have, though, and the feelings Steve has already started to develop, just over the last few days of constantly texting, are on a whole new level to anything Steve has experienced before.

And he was absolutely right to masturbate before this, Steve thinks as he catches sight of Bucky walking up the street toward him, because _fuck_.

Bucky is wearing that see-through shirt from his text, tucked into a pair of black skinny jeans. He hasn’t spotted Steve just yet, so Steve takes the opportunity to fully, openly stare at him. His hair is down, for the first time that Steve has seen, loose curls flowing lightly around his face as he walks, hands in his pockets. His eyes meet Steve’s, and a smile lights up his whole face.

Steve is _fucked_.

“Hey,” Bucky greets Steve as he walks up to him, just a little too close to be casual.

“Hi,” Steve says back, dumbly. “You look amazing.”

He touches Bucky’s arm lightly, and leans in to kiss him on the cheek in greeting, but Bucky is fast. Turns his head just enough to catch Steve’s lips with his instead, and yes, this is a much better idea, Steve thinks as their mouths slot together.

When he pulls away, just a little bit, Bucky grins at him again, all happiness and crinkles around his eyes. “Thanks,” he replies to Steve’s compliment. “You look good, too, Cap.”

Steve can’t help it. He kisses Bucky again.

Bucky hums into Steve’s mouth.

Steve no longer cares about dinner.

But Bucky probably does, he reasons with himself. So he takes Bucky’s hand, and leads him into the restaurant.

Steve made a reservation, so they’re seated right away. Bucky orders a craft cocktail off the menu, but Steve is too distracted to read, so he orders an old-fashioned.

As soon as the waiter has left, Bucky turns back to Steve.

“So,” he says, and Steve raises his eyebrows. “All those texts, and I realized on the way here, I never actually asked what you do.”

Steve laughs. “Ah,” he replies. “And now I realize I’ve committed the same sin.”

Bucky smirks at him. “I asked first.”

“Yeah, okay, fair enough,” Steve chuckles. “I’m an investigative reporter,” he tells Bucky.

“Really?” Bucky asks, his eyebrows shooting up in interest. “Are you a freelancer, or do you work with a specific news outlet?”

“I’m contracted with The New York Initiative.”

Bucky’s eyes widen in surprised delight. “I read the Initiative!” he says excitedly. “I _love_ the Initiative, you write for it?”

Steve grins, feelings his face flush with warmth. “I do,” he confirms, ridiculously pleased that Bucky has not only heard of his work, but has probably read it, and _liked_ it.

“But hang on,” Bucky protests, “I always read the bylines, and I’ve never seen your name there.”

His eyes are narrowed, but crinkled in a smile, teasing, as he looks at Steve through his lashes. Steve’s grin widens.

“I swear I’m telling the truth,” he says, laughing. “You can even call my editor if you like. I write under a pseudonym, my nom de plume is Steven Grant.”

Bucky’s reaction is fucking adorable. He physically startles backwards, eyes wide again, and looks _delighted_.

“You’re _Steven Grant?_ ”

“Grant is my middle name,” Steve confirms, watching Bucky, completely enamored.

Bucky laughs loudly. “Fuck you!” he exclaims, a massive smile plastered across his face. “You’re my favorite writer at the Initiative!”

Steve knows that his face turns bright red at that, can feel the heat envelop his entire head. “I am not,” he mumbles, embarrassed.

“You are!” Bucky insists honestly, and the way he’s looking at Steve with such _wonder_ — like Steve might be the sun — is entirely too overwhelming for a first date. “Your work is always so well researched, and so dynamic and thrilling to read, but it never feels sensationalized, you know?” God, he’s _gushing_. “It’s like I’m right there with you as you’re investigating, and you really take so much care to write from the perspective of the people who are most affected by your topics, I’m really— Wow, I just love your work so much!”

He’s unabashed about gushing, and that makes him five thousand times more attractive somehow. Like this man doesn’t care about looking like an idiot, he just wants to tell Steve how much he appreciates his work, and _holy fuck_ he might genuinely be the best person in the world. What if he is? How is Steve going to cope with _that?_

Steve trips over a mumbled thanks, overwhelmed, and is thankfully saved by the waiter coming over with their drinks, and to take their order.

Bucky hasn’t looked at the menu at _all_ , he’s been so focused on talking to Steve. But when Steve tries to give him more time, Bucky waves him off and does a quick, cursory glance as Steve orders the same thing he had last time he was here, still too distracted to be able to read the menu. When he’s finished, Bucky orders a pasta dish, and smiles beatifically at the waiter as he hands over his menu.

When the waiter leaves, he turns back to Steve, and rests his chin on his hand.

“Holy fuck,” Bucky breathes, shaking his head on his hand a little, eyes sparkling, “I can’t believe I’ve sucked face with _Steven Grant_.”

Steve laughs out loud. He even throws his head back with it. He hasn’t laughed like this on a first date...maybe ever, honestly. It’s _such_ a nice feeling.

Bucky grins at Steve, and his nose scrunches at the way Steve is laughing. It’s the _cutest_ thing in the entire fucking universe, Steve is absolutely sure of that.

“So what led you to investigative journalism?” Bucky eventually asks when Steve’s laughter has faded to a humming mumble, like there’s nothing in the world more interesting than this. Than _Steve_.

Steve breathes, and tries to think over the cacophonous beating of his heart. “Well,” he begins, “when I enlisted, it turned out I had an aptitude for the army. Got promoted pretty fast, rose through the ranks. I thought maybe I’d go career, since I seemed to be a natural at it.”

“Sure,” Bucky agrees, still intently listening. His eyes, usually that sharp, steel blue, look almost bottle green in this light, filled with warmth.

Steve smiles at him. “But as it turns out,” he continues, “war isn’t something I want to make _any_ kind of career out of.”

Bucky hums in agreement, nodding and lifting his drink to his lips.

“After I made captain, though, I stalled out on promotions.”

“Really? Why is that?” Bucky asks. He looks so genuinely interested in Steve’s story, and Steve has already been _quickly_ catching feelings for this guy, the prospect that Bucky could be just as taken with Steve as Steve is with him is almost overwhelming with how exciting it is.

Steve shrugs, and tries to remain outwardly casual while his insides are doing a cha-cha. “Partly because I didn’t want to,” he admits. “I was leading this SOF team, and I just...I’d never felt so useful as I did on that team. We worked so seamlessly as a unit. I didn’t want to leave them. Also,” Steve adds, smirking, “I was good at everything _except_ following orders. I had a few too many documented instances of doing the right thing, instead of what I was told to do.”

Bucky chuckles. “Not much for being told what to do, huh?” His eyes flash.

“Yeah, not really,” Steve agrees, grinning again. “Anyway, once that tour ended, I got out. It was clear to me that the military wasn’t what I wanted. When I got home, I went to the police academy.”

Bucky’s eyebrows pinch together. “No way,” he challenges.

“Why, you’ve read any of my many scathing critiques of American law enforcement?” Steve asks, smirking, and Bucky laughs.

“Yeah,” he confirms, “I would never have pegged you as an ex-cop.”

Steve shakes his head, still ashamed of his ignorance back then. “I was aware that there were abuses of power within the system,” he says. “I naively thought that I could still do good work inside it, maybe even try to change the climate of my own precinct.”

He rolls his eyes. “I was an idiot. I went into the Special Victims Unit of the NYPD, and all I wanted to do was help people. And I was. I was _trying._ But I came to realize that there weren’t just abuses of power _within_ the system. The entire fucking _system_ is an abuse of power. And just by working inside of it, I was contributing to it. I couldn’t reconcile that, so I quit. Made an enemy of the police commissioner over it, too. Luckily, Nick Fury’s an old friend, and when he heard I’d left the force, he recruited me to the Initiative. He had faith in me that I’d make a good journalist, despite having absolutely no experience. He knew I could investigate, but he taught me how to be a journalist.”

“That’s amazing,” Bucky says warmly. “Are you happier now?”

“God, _so_ much,” Steve sighs. “One of my two best friends works at the Initiative with me, and we always help with each other’s stories; working for Fury is tough, but great; and I’m not contributing to the disenfranchisement of marginalized communities anymore. So yeah, I’m happy.”

Bucky’s smile is the prettiest thing in the entire world, and he blesses Steve with it now. “I’m glad to hear that,” he says softly, and it seems like he really means it.

“Thanks,” Steve mutters, gooey, smiling back. His heart flutters. “Enough about me, though. It’s your turn.”

Bucky’s smile widens. It’s like he can’t _stop_ smiling when he looks at Steve, and Steve _likes that_.

“My job?” Bucky asks, for clarification, and Steve nods. “I’m a licensed therapist. I specialize in adolescence, teenage addiction, and working with at-risk kids in general. If nothing else, enlisting meant I finally had an opportunity to go to college, so after I recovered from my amputation, I did the whole gambit: first year undergrad through PhD candidacy. I knew at that point that I wanted to be someone who could really make a positive difference in the lives of struggling kids.”

He glances down at the table shyly, and adds, “I have some private clients to pay the bills, but I largely work with a local LGBTQ center, where I provide low-cost therapy to members of the community, especially youth. The center pays me my low rate, so I can even treat some of my clients there at no cost to them at all. That’s my favorite part.”

Steve is ridiculously impressed. “Jesus,” he breathes. “That’s fucking awesome, Buck.”

And now it’s Bucky’s turn to shrug and blush. “I like it.”

Watching Bucky shyly tuck his long, chestnut curls behind his ear, Steve thinks maybe this whole ‘taking it slow’ thing is going to be a lot harder than he initially thought.

By the time Steve is walking Bucky back to his apartment, nearby in Windsor Terrace, he’s fairly certain he’s fallen a little bit in love already. Bucky’s fingers are laced through his, and the way their hands fit together is some kind of revelation.

Bucky is slightly tipsy, and can’t stop giggling. Steve wants _nothing_ more than to crowd him against the nearest wall, and kiss him senseless.

“This is me,” Bucky says, indicating the building they’ve reached.

He tugs, possibly unconsciously, at Steve’s hand. Steve comes to him at once, allowing himself to wrap his arms around Bucky’s waist. Bucky presses into him, chest-to-chest.

“I had a nice time tonight,” he murmurs, tilting his head up to Steve’s and parting his lips invitingly.

Steve brushes Bucky’s nose with his own, and slides his hands up Bucky’s back. “Me too,” he agrees, almost a whisper. “You wanna go out again sometime?”

“Mhm,” Bucky hums. His eyes flutter shut as he tips up just enough to meet their lips together.

Steve fucking loves kissing Bucky. He’d happily do it for the rest of his life.

But.

Steve steps back, pressing the keys he swiped out of Bucky’s pocket into his hand. “I’ll call you tomorrow, Buck.”

Bucky’s eyes are wide as Steve grins cheekily at him. “Excuse me?” he says, laughing incredulously. “You're actually just dropping me off? You were all over me an _hour_ after we met, and now you’re just... _leaving?_ ”

Steve shrugs. “You want to take it slow.”

The look of offended shock on Bucky’s face is absolutely worth the blue balls.

“I didn’t—” he stammers. “I mean, you can _kiss_ me!”

“I did,” Steve answers lightly, savoring this, the adorable look of pure, affronted consternation on Bucky’s unbelievably gorgeous face. “Goodnight, Buck.”

Bucky squints at Steve. “Punk,” he says accusingly.

Steve salutes him. “I’ll call you!” he calls out, and smirks as he turns to walk away.

🎈

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **Next time:**   
> 


	3. Three: September 8th

Bucky is pretty sure he’s been walking on air for the past month, and it’s freaking him out.

He is deeply, painfully aware that just five weeks is _absolutely not_ enough time to get to know someone enough to be falling in love with them, but every single atom of his being is pointing him to that conclusion. He's been out with Steve something like a dozen times already, not including the night they met, and he knows that if he wasn’t deliberately pacing himself, he would have absolutely tried to see Steve every single night of those thirty-six days.

And it’s not like Steve is helping _at all_. Bucky is pretty sure that the only reason Steve hasn’t yet taken him in a manly fashion is because Bucky asked him to take it slow. Which he is doing. Which makes him even more lovable.

Not that they haven’t... _progressed_ since their first date. After Steve’s initial cheeky betrayal, he quickly gave up the chaste act, and every time they’ve seen each other since, day or night, Bucky has found himself pressed up against a wall, or a railing, or a park bench one time, and wrapped in Steve’s strong arms, helpless but to try desperately to get his mouth on every part of Steve he can reach, and grind on him like a fucking teenager.

He even tried, once, to get Steve to let him go down on him in a dark alley — something Bucky hasn’t tried to do since he was a _lot_ younger — but Steve had been resolute: if Bucky wasn’t coming, neither was Steve. An annoyingly noble stance that drove Bucky crazy with lust.

Because he’s not trying to go slow because he _wants_ to, or because he doesn’t _want_ Steve. He just knows that logically, it’s the healthiest thing for him right now. But that doesn’t make it any less agonizing, when Steve is literally the prettiest person Bucky has ever met, and also a _goddamn hero_ , apparently, and Bucky _likes him so fucking much, Jesus Christ._

Bucky is also painfully aware of how much of his day-to-day is now taken up by wandering thoughts about Steve. Even now, as he preps for his group session with his favorite kids (not that he’d ever tell any of his clients he has favorites, but he does), his unconscious thoughts are lingering across the way the sun shone through Steve’s eyelashes yesterday at the park.

His phone goes off, and he knows it’s a text from Steve before he even looks at it. But just as it buzzes, one of the kids in his group walks through the door, so he has to ignore it. As soon as they arrive, his clients are his only priority.

“Hey, Teddy,” Bucky greets him, dropping the last of the workbooks he photocopied for today’s session on the final chair. “You’re early today.”

“Yeah,” Teddy answers. “I kinda wanted to talk to you before everyone gets here.”

Teddy is a huge kid; tall, broad and muscular, and a skilled athlete who lives up to his name. He’s the sweetest, most emotionally mature teenager in this particular group, and his biggest obstacle, at the moment, is that he cares so much about the people around him, he has a lot of trouble setting his own boundaries. It’s something they’re working on, but it’s so hard for Teddy. He just has a huge heart. It’s not something Bucky wants to rid him of, but Teddy would have better control over his own life if he just learns how to put himself first sometimes.

“Sure,” Bucky answers, attentive. “What’s up?”

“It’s Billy,” Teddy says nervously, and Bucky would be lying if he said he was surprised. “I don’t think he’s doing very well, but he doesn’t want to talk to me about it.”

Billy is Teddy’s boyfriend, and another member of this particular group. He's also been the primary source of Teddy’s concern lately.

Billy’s had a rough life. He was already twelve years old when he was finally taken out of a lifelong abusive living situation, and he spent the next three years of his life being passed around the foster care system. He’s been with his current foster family for almost a year now, and they love him dearly, and are more than willing to fight for him, but even that is hard for Billy. He’s not used to being taken care of, and even though his foster parents and his devoted boyfriend all want to, he has trouble letting them. He’s also on-and-off recovering from an addiction to opioids, most notably heroin, that he inherited from his birth parents. Bucky has seen him fall off the wagon a few times now, but Billy is fighting hard for himself. He’s just got the cards stacked against him.

Recently, Bucky has noticed a change in Billy’s behavior. The last few weeks, he hasn’t been participating in group discussions, and he hasn’t shown interest in talking to Bucky privately, either. It’s a sign he could be close to another relapse, and Bucky is already keeping a close eye on him. So far, Billy hasn’t shown signs of being back on drugs, but that could change at any point, and besides, part of the disease of addiction is learning how to hide it as much as you can from the people around you. At least for a while.

“Well,” Bucky begins evenly, “you know that you can’t make him talk to you if he doesn’t want to.”

“I know,” Teddy agrees impatiently. He’s heard this before. “But I’m worried about him.”

“It’s fine to be worried,” Bucky says. “But if it’s making you anxious, you have to take a step back and take care of yourself, remember? Boundaries in relationships are healthy.”

Teddy nods. “I know,” he says again. He’s receptive, but he’s worried. “I’m not trying to force him to do anything. I just want him to be okay.”

“I know you do.” Teddy is such a good kid. “But he’s got more than just you, okay? He’s got his foster parents, who love him, and are watching out for him. And he’s got me, and this group. You don’t have to be solely responsible.”

“Will you keep an eye on him?”

“I already am, kid.” Bucky jerks his chin toward the circle of chairs. “Why don’t you take a seat, the rest of the group should be coming in soon.”

Teddy nods, and picks a chair to sit in. His usual: four away from Bucky’s, almost center, but not quite. As though on cue, a voice rings out in the hallway outside just as Teddy sits down.

Bucky takes the distraction of the new arrival as an opportunity to slyly check his phone before he has to put it away for good.

**[Steve (3:48pm)]** Please. You’re gorgeous and you know it and you WEAPONIZE it.

**[Steve (3:50pm)]** Wanna see me tonight? Roommate just cancelled our chill movie night plans, and I miss you. :(

They saw each other yesterday. Bucky tries not to grin stupidly at his phone. He shuts the screen off, and drops the phone back in his pocket. After his session, he’ll text Steve back that yes, he absolutely wants to see him tonight. Wants to see him _every_ night.

Well. Maybe he won’t say _that_.

When Bucky turns back to the circle of chairs, the three of his kids that have come in since he was last looking wave to him. Kate is chatting with Teddy, sitting sideways on the chair next to him — the one she knows Billy isn’t going to sit in when he gets here.

Kate Bishop is assertive and outgoing, and has a deep desire to lead. She has a tendency to take care of the people around her, whether they want her to or not, but she and Teddy have a special type of bond, because Teddy — usually the big guy, the protector — loves letting her watch out for him in a way most of the other kids in this group just don’t. Kate joined the group nine months ago, after escaping a violent gang she’d been involved with since childhood. She has an alcohol addiction, triggered by her memories of violence, but in just nine months she's come so far. She’s fiercely proud to be bisexual, which is why she sought out this center to begin with.

Cassie and America are standing behind the two of them, seemingly engrossed in a different, side conversation. As they talk, and Bucky takes his seat at the theoretical head of the group, they’re joined by Eli, who is dealing with his transition while struggling with steroid abuse and anger issues, and then Nate, who’s nineteen, and struggles with staying on their meds that help control their schizophrenia. RJ follows not too long after. That just leaves Billy and David, and they’ll be all set.

Bucky has such a soft spot for this group. Aside from all being queer kids, the thing that unites them is that all of these kids have experienced trauma. Most — not all — struggle with addiction of some sort. Some are here voluntarily, others by court mandate. Bucky doesn’t care what brought them here, only that they’re here. His job is to help them while they are. His work with the LGBTQ center is almost always rewarding, but there’s something about this group in particular that tugs at Bucky’s heartstrings like none of his other groups do.

Maybe these kids remind him of himself. Maybe helping them feels, in a way, like helping his past self, when no one else would, or could.

Billy comes skidding in five minutes after they were supposed to start, calling his apologies out to Bucky and beelining his way to Teddy, kissing him quickly before he takes the empty chair next to his boyfriend.

Bucky looks around as the kids who haven’t yet sat down start making their way towards chairs. “Anyone know if we’re going to see David today?” he asks the group.

He’s met with a few shaking heads before RJ, who, as always, is sitting to Bucky’s immediate left, pipes up.

“He told me he wasn’t coming today. I thought he was going to tell you.”

RJ is uniquely special to Bucky. Growing up, he was trapped in a fundamentalist religious cult that his parents were leaders in, where, despite being vocally transgender and bisexual, he was forced to live as a girl. He escaped and ran to New York City, where he met Bucky when he tried to pick his pocket on the street. And Bucky just can’t leave a stray out in the cold, so he took RJ in, helped him get on his feet.

Actually, RJ isn’t really in this group. He works at the LGBTQ center, and he’s technically working right now, shadowing Bucky, as a kind of apprenticeship. He does this for a few of Bucky’s groups, but in this one, Bucky has him sit in. RJ doesn’t trust anyone but Bucky, and he desperately needs friends close to his age who have even slightly similar life experience to him. So, while Bucky can’t actually treat him without a severe conflict of interest, he can at least cheat the system enough for RJ to have an opportunity to spend time with kids like him, in a meaningful way, for an hour twice a week.

“All right,” Bucky says in response to RJ’s information, “not a problem. Let’s get started, then. Anyone want to start us off?”

In the predictable silence that follows asking a group of teenagers to take initiative, Bucky takes a quick scan of the group.

There’s Cassie, immediately on his right. Her dad passed away just under a year ago, while she was at the beginning of her transition. Her mom tries to be supportive, but doesn’t understand her gender identity in the simple way her dad did, so she leans on Bucky as an emotional pillar. After her dad’s death, she fell in with a bad crowd, and came up for air two weeks later with a full-blown addiction to narcotics. She’s been in treatment since then, and recently she’s been doing really well.

Next to Cassie is Kate, and on her right sits Billy, his arm outstretched to hold Teddy’s hand across the gap between them.

Teddy and Billy are both gay, and when there’s little security to be found elsewhere in his life, Billy chooses to find a sense of stability and comfort in his relationship, and his identity as a nonbinary man. Teddy was born into poverty in a Slavic country, and raised for his first few years in a filthy orphanage before he was adopted. His struggles mostly stem from the trauma he experienced as an infant and toddler, and the repressed memories he periodically uncovers from that time.

After Teddy, there’s America. Directly opposite Bucky as usual, because she likes to stare him down when she disagrees with him. She doesn’t know that Bucky has faced down much worse than an independent teenage lesbian with a good heart. America’s moms were killed in the same car crash a few years ago, and she was introduced to narcotics in one of her many foster homes. A year ago, at sixteen, she was legally emancipated, and now lives by herself in a tiny studio with the bathroom down the hall.

Next is Eli, then Nate, then an empty chair where David, pansexual and recently blinded after being attacked in the street, would usually sit with his guide dog, Mac.

After an excruciatingly long silence, Nate, a natural leader, finally raises their hand.

“Fine,” they say in a huff, “I’ll go first.”

Bucky breathes deeply to try to calm his racing nerves before he reaches up and knocks on Steve’s door.

This is the first time either of them has been over to the other’s place, and what with the way they both obviously want to fuck each other stupid, meeting in such a private place feels…dangerous.

Although, technically, five weeks isn’t exactly _fast,_ is it?

No. No, he’s doing this for a reason. Bucky wants things to go _well_ with Steve. He wants half a chance that this could actually _be_ something, and all the cards are so stacked against him — he’s still _significantly_ fucked up from what happened to him — that he needs to give himself what little chance he can. He can’t control much, but he can try not to self-sabotage like he usually does.

He can do that. For a chance at something good with Steve, he can do that.

He’ll be fine.

Bucky knows he’s in trouble when the door swings open, and Steve’s beautiful, soft smile greets him, and he _melts_.

“Hi, honey,” Steve murmurs, looping an arm around Bucky’s waist, and pulling him in to kiss him sweetly. When he moves away after too short a time, he adds, “I’m glad you could make it.”

Bucky grins back at him. “Me too,” he breathes, and pushes in for a longer kiss, slipping both hands into Steve’s hair.

Steve ends up pulling him inside, closing the door, and turning them both around without losing contact with Bucky’s mouth once. It’s incredibly gratifying.

Bucky grunts, weak. “Is your roommate home?” he gasps before Steve kisses him again.

It takes a minute to get his response, but that’s totally okay with Bucky, considering the reason is that Steve’s tongue is in his mouth.

Finally, Steve pulls away, and releases his hold on Bucky. Which Bucky proceeds to pout about.

“Nah, Sam’s out for the night,” Steve answers belatedly, smiling over his shoulder at Bucky as he walks into the kitchen. “Said he won’t be back until late. We’ve got the place to ourselves. Something to drink?”

“Trying to liquor me up?” Bucky teases, his heart beating loud enough that Steve can probably hear.

Steve looks at him over the fridge door, his eyes clear and serious. “Never,” he promises. Then, after a moment, he cracks a grin. “Unless, of course, you want me to.”

Bucky laughs. “What are you offering?”

“Water, beer, diet coke,” Steve lists off. “And orange juice, but I think that’s my roommate’s.”

“What are you having?”

“Beer, unless you’d rather a sober night.”

Bucky smiles. “I’ll have a beer, too.”

As Steve grabs two out of the fridge, and pops them both open with the bottle opener on the counter, Bucky adds, “You know your place is super close to my office?”

Steve smiles. “Yeah? he asks, then hands one of the beers to Bucky, lingering a little when their fingers brush against each other.

Bucky swallows roughly. “Yeah, just like two and a half blocks,” he mutters, petering out on the small talk while Steve is regarding him with such soft _fuck me_ eyes, possibly without even meaning to.

But Steve just nods like this has been an actually interesting factoid. “I thought I’d let you pick the movie tonight,” he says then, leading Bucky over toward the couch. “I think Sam wanted to watch some weird comedy from the 80s with very few redeeming qualities, so I’m glad you’re here for multiple reasons.”

“Hang on,” Bucky protests, “I didn’t realize you were gonna make me choose things tonight. I thought I was coming to relax!”

Laughing, Steve hands Bucky the remote. “No pressure, just pick what you like. I’m happy with anything, I swear.”

Bucky grumps showily, but starts flipping through Steve’s digital catalogue of movies, trying not to grin like an idiot when Steve plops down next to him, arms across the back of the sofa, and close enough that their thighs are already touching.

“Hmm,” Bucky considers thoughtfully. “Should I go for a boring, but generally-considered ‘good’ movie, or are we at the point yet where I can be basic and admit that all I like are dumb sci-fi movies and even dumber rom-coms?”

Steve’s hand comes down to rest on Bucky’s shoulder as he answers, “We are — and have been, mind you — at the point where all I want you to be is you.”

Bucky stops, and looks back at Steve, whose face is so gooey and dopey, it just about takes Bucky’s breath away.

“Fuckin’ hell, Rogers,” he mutters. “Anyone else, that would be the cheesiest thing I’ve ever heard, but coming from you it makes me wanna...,” he pauses, looking Steve up and down, “ _do_ stuff to you.”

Steve grins back at him, cheeky, and cocks his head. “What kinda stuff?”

Bucky doesn’t answer for a moment, just stares down at Steve’s broad chest. He shakes his head when he realizes he’s actually salivating. “We can’t talk about that right now.”

Steve laughs again, his large, warm hand slipping down to run over Bucky’s back, causing Bucky to shiver bodily. “Okay, fair enough,” Steve murmurs. “You better remember it for later, then.”

Bucky is in _so_ much trouble.

He picks a movie. He doesn’t really pay attention to which one it is, since Steve’s fingers are now ghosting lightly over the base of his neck. Steve adjusts as Bucky leans back, lifting his hand back up to the top of the sofa. Bucky aches for his touch immediately.

He pretends to watch the movie for a few minutes, but Bucky can’t take anything in except the way Steve feels so warm beside him. The air feels full of static electricity, and Bucky is _deeply_ aware of Steve’s every movement, every breath.

Slowly, Steve lets his arm slip from the back of the sofa to drape around Bucky’s shoulders instead.

Steve leans into Bucky, and mumbles softly in his ear, giving him full-body goosebumps, “Should I pretend I’m not intentionally putting my arm around you?”

Bucky tries to laugh, but it comes out as a breathy sigh. “Fucking punk,” he mutters back, and tucks himself further under Steve’s arm, leaning his head on Steve’s shoulder.

Another few minutes pass, and Bucky still has no idea what this movie is even about. He doesn’t think he’s fully processed a single line of dialogue.

Steve’s cheek comes to rest on top of Bucky’s head. Then, a minute later, he moves again, turning his face to press a kiss into Bucky’s hair.

It causes Bucky to look up at Steve, into impossibly blue-green eyes, gazing back down at Bucky with a softness that breaks his heart.

Steve ducks down, and catches Bucky’s mouth with his, and Bucky feels warmth pooling at the base of his belly, gathering somewhere in his groin.

Steve is holding him firmly, kissing him deeply, and they’re here together and all alone, and Bucky’s resolve is quickly dissolving. He angles his body further into Steve, who also adjusts until they’re chest-to-chest, hearts beating against each other. Steve’s hands slide into Bucky’s long hair as Bucky pulls at Steve’s shirt, rucking it up unconsciously as though his hands have a mind of their own, and are desperately questing for bare skin. Steve is soft, warm, _incredible_. He lifts his arms, releasing Bucky’s hair, when Bucky’s hands decide of their own accord to pull Steve’s shirt off over his head.

This is the first time Bucky has seen Steve without a shirt, and _lord almighty._ He runs his hands up Steve’s visible abs to his lightly freckled chest, stretching his fingers out over the broad muscle and fuzz of hair there as Steve moves from Bucky’s lips to his neck, pushing his hair aside to leave open-mouth kisses along the column of his throat, and Bucky lets out a noise like a whimper while Steve presses into him, pushing him backwards.

Bucky’s back hits the sofa, and he pulls his legs up while Steve shifts until he’s stretched out on top of him, settled in between his spread legs, and pulling at the collar of his shirt to nip at his collarbone. He smiles like the sun when Bucky pulls his own shirt off in response.

Now that they’re skin to bare skin, Bucky cannot keep his hands off of Steve, nor can he help his erection straining at his jeans. He keeps moaning Steve’s name, and he can’t stop himself. Steve is all over him, too, kissing him all over his torso, all over his face, grinding his hips down into Bucky’s as hard as Bucky is lifting his to Steve’s.

“ _God,_ Buck, look at you,” Steve mutters as Bucky shoves his knee between Steve’s legs so he can helplessly rut against Steve’s thigh. “You’re so fucking gorgeous, do you know that?” His big hand shoves into Bucky’s hair again, making a fist. “Do you have any idea how perfect you are?”

Bucky tries to make a face at Steve, but the way Steve is holding him, kissing him, grinding into him, he doesn’t have much control over his expressions. “Me?” he scoffs breathlessly. “Have you seen _you?_ ”

Steve laughs a breath into his mouth, teeth scraping over Bucky’s lower lip before he presses their lips together over and over again. The hand in Bucky’s hair softens, and slips down Bucky’s bare chest and stomach, slowly coming to land on the waistband of Bucky’s jeans, fingers looped inside while Steve thumbs at the button on his fly.

Steve presses his forehead to Bucky’s, eyes closed and breathing heavy and hips not quite still. After a moment, he raises his head again, just barely, and blue meets blue.

“Do you want me to stop?” Steve whispers, serious.

And this is it, the tipping point. If they cross this threshold together, there’s no going back. No more taking things slow. No more pretending Bucky hasn’t completely fallen, head over heels, for the man on top of him, despite what that might mean. He doesn’t answer — can’t quite say yes, can’t quite say no.

“Bucky,” Steve breathes into the tense, breathing silence between them, and Bucky’s never heard his chosen name sound quite so beautiful as when it passes through Steve’s lips. _Bucky_. “I can stop if you want me to. I need you to tell me what you want.”

Bucky’s breaths are shallow and quick. Steve’s eyes are clear. His face is perfect. Bucky can’t keep pretending he doesn’t desperately, achingly want this.

Finally, in a rush, he sighs, “Don’t stop.”

Steve acts instantly, popping the button open on Bucky’s fly and unzipping it in one action. His mouth presses and then opens against Bucky’s, swirling his tongue through Bucky’s mouth before he’s suddenly gone again, but only to press hurried, urgent kisses down Bucky's chest, down his belly, as Steve’s fingers hook around his waistband over his hips to start yanking his jeans down at _last_.

_**art:** Steve kisses Bucky's neck and starts pulling his jeans down. **art by:** ArtDiwey_

And, of course, it is precisely this moment when the front door of Steve’s apartment bursts open to give way for a very drunk, very delighted man to enter and spot them both, on top of one another on the couch.

“Oh, hell _o!_ ” the man carols out, his voice rocketing to a strangely high pitch on the ‘ _o_.’ And then he makes a drunken, flamboyant bow, whilst doffing his imaginary hat to Bucky and Steve. Steve cringes harder than Bucky has ever seen anyone cringe before, and climbs up off of Bucky.

Bucky quickly does his fly back up, and tries to will away his erection as he props himself up on his arms, glancing from the new addition to the party back to Steve.

“Should I introduce myself?” he mumbles uneasily to Steve while Presumably Steve’s Roommate stumbles aimlessly in the direction of the kitchen.

Steve rolls his eyes. “He won’t remember this tomorrow,” he assures Bucky in a low voice. “It’d be a waste. Hey, Sam?” he calls to the drunk man. “That’s not where your room is.”

Sam does a weird, French-accented _hon hon hon_ laugh, and then spins around, which knocks him off balance, and he falls against the arm of the couch, just missing landing on Bucky’s head.

Steve lets out a dramatically put-upon sigh. He squeezes Bucky’s knee, then stands and goes to pick Sam up off the arm of the sofa.

Sam makes a _lot_ of noise in protest at Steve essentially carrying him to his room, and putting him in bed. By the time Steve is back, Bucky is fully clothed again, sitting on the couch with his hands on his knees. Steve comes and sits down next to him.

After a moment, Steve speaks up.

“I’d happily invite you to my bedroom to pick up where we left off,” he tells Buck sincerely, “but I’m getting the impression the moment has passed?”

He’s always so damn sincere. Bucky winces guiltily at him.

“Sorry,” he mumbles. Now that the clouds of lust have parted, his senses have returned. And he made the decision to go slow for a reason. A reason he shouldn’t just cast aside in the heat of the moment. No matter how _hot_ the moment is.

“Don't be,” Steve insists firmly in response to Bucky’s apology. He cracks a grin. “I’ll just, you know, jerk off when you leave.”

The frankness surprises Bucky into a laugh, which he’s grateful for. “I mean, same.”

Steve’s smile is so soft, so tender, as he gazes at Bucky’s face. He lifts his hand, and gently tucks Bucky’s hair back behind his ear, then lets his hand linger as he cradles Bucky’s face. He doesn’t say a thing. Just smiles.

Bucky is heartstruck.

It takes him a good few seconds to pull himself together when Steve takes his hand away.

Luckily, Steve doesn’t seem to notice, as he’s saying, “It’s probably for the best, anyway.” Bucky glances up at him and he continues, “I don’t want you to have any regrets about it when we do have sex. I don’t want you to feel like it was too fast, or you made a decision on the fly, or anything like that. I want it to be what you want, when you want.” His eyes are still so, so soft. “Okay?”

Something about the moment cracks Bucky open like a shell, and, vulnerable and honest, he lets slip, “You seem so sure you’re gonna want me around long enough for this to happen.”

At that, Steve frowns, confused. “I am sure,” he says simply, like that doesn’t mean everything. “I’m very sure. I’m gonna want you around ’s long as you wanna be around. I have no plans to stop asking you out until you don’t want to go out with me anymore.”

Bucky drops his gaze to the carpet. Can’t maintain eye contact anymore for the blinding honesty that Steve cares this much about him. He whispers, “Well, that’s not likely to happen any time soon.”

There’s a smile in Steve’s voice as he responds. “Glad to hear it.” Then, “You wanna finish the movie?”

Bucky sighs, forcing himself to make eye contact with Steve again as he feels his shell reforming. “I would,” he says truthfully, “but I’ve got early sessions tomorrow.” He hadn’t really planned to go out at all tonight, but then Steve had texted him, and he’d gone blind.

But Steve just nods, accepting, and smiles. “Then lemme walk you out,” he says, standing up.

Steve slips his t-shirt back over his head as Bucky finds his shoes and puts them back on. They walk to the door together, and Bucky has to insist that Steve doesn’t have to walk him _all the way out of the building_ , that this is fine.

Steve leans in, and kisses him. Gentle. Familiar. Heartbreakingly tender.

“Get home safe, okay?” he breathes against Bucky’s mouth.

Bucky hums his agreement. “Call me tomorrow,” he murmurs as their noses brush.

“Always,” Steve answers, impossibly, and then kisses him again.

🎈

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **Next time:**   
> 


	4. Four: October 2nd

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Today is rough for us Americans, so here's some fluff, a little early. ❤️

Work finally catches up to Steve and, after nearly two months of flitting out a few minutes early every few days to go on dates, only half paying attention to everything but the most pressing tasks, he finds himself _buried_ in deadlines, and has to stay late to catch up for an entire week, including working all the way through the weekend leading into it.

Which means he doesn’t see Bucky for a whole seven days straight.

They text constantly, but it’s not enough for either of them, their text conversations full of hearts and sad emojis, dotted with the occasional gif of someone dramatically crying and throwing themselves around in a tantrum of ‘ _I miss you.’_ Maybe it’s histrionic and petulant, but Steve was getting used to spending three to four days a week basking in Bucky’s presence, and suddenly being entirely cut off like this is just _cruel_.

Late on the third night of their forced separation, Bucky surprises Steve once again by FaceTiming him from bed, sleepy face and mussed hair and everything. Steve tries not to spend the entire call looking just like the heart-eyed emoji he’s sent Bucky about a hundred times a day recently.

He’s becoming more and more sure of his feelings for Bucky, despite the relatively short time they’ve known each other. It might be a little fast, but every smile, every eye roll, every time Bucky tucks his hair behind his ear, makes Steve feel ever and ever more in love.

Finally, on day seven of being tragically, sadistically deprived of Bucky, Steve gets his last round of edits back from his managing editor, and realizes there’s little enough to change this time that he might possibly, maybe be able to _not_ work through a second weekend in a row.

Literally the second he realizes this, he takes out his phone, hiding it under his desk, and texts Bucky.

**[Steve (2:17pm)]** There’s an awesome farmers market on Saturday mornings in the park down the street from my place. Wanna help me pick up some new local honey?

A sharp knock on the desk across from him alerts him fast enough to the approach of the Initiative’s editor-in-chief that he manages to hide his phone and look like he’s working before Fury walks past.

When he’s gone, Steve nods gratefully to Natasha. “Good looking out.”

“I’ve got your back, bro,” Nat grins back at him. Fury doesn’t like it when they’re on their personal phones, unless they can pretty much prove they are for business relating to the paper.

But then Steve’s phone buzzes twice in quick succession, and he looks down at it instantly, because of course he does.

**[Bucky** 🎈 **(2:18pm)]** i’ll be your local honey 😉

**[Bucky** 🎈 **(2:18pm)]** see you at your place 7am sharp i can’t WAIT 🥰🥰

Steve grins, and feels his face warm with affection.

“The boyfriend again?” Nat asks, nodding to Steve’s phone when he looks up at her with questioning eyebrows.

“He’s not my boyfriend!” Steve sighs for the fiftieth time. “But yes.”

Natasha rolls her eyes. “He absolutely is your boyfriend,” she argues, “you just haven’t labelled it yet. You’re not seeing other people, right?”

Steve shrugs. “I mean, _I’m_ not,” he mutters, dropping his eyes back to his computer screen and clicking around at random to try to appear like he’s actually doing something.

He’s been thinking about this a lot during the last week of absence. What if Bucky _is_ seeing other people? He’s got every right to, he and Steve have made no promises to each other at all, but the idea scratches under Steve’s skin. Steve has been stuck in the newspaper’s office all week, but Bucky could have been going out, seeing and meeting other people who _don’t_ have to crunch on deadlines for that entire time. He could have another person he sees regularly. He could have all along. Steve could, possibly, be much more invested in this than Bucky has ever been.

Natasha raises an eyebrow, not at all fooled by Steve’s impressive cover of moodily clicking at his open document.

“You haven’t talked about it?” she asks, knowing the answer.

“He’s allowed to—”

“Jesus Christ,” Nat breathes, leaning back in her chair and pinching the bridge of her nose, absolutely done with Steve’s dumb ass.

Steve is about to pipe up in protest when a deep, loud voice behind him makes him jump.

“This doesn’t sound like paper business,” Fury scolds them, sounding, as usual, as though someone stole his lunch and he’s indignant about it. “This sounds like personal drama to me. You know I have no room at my paper for—” Fury pauses and makes a face of pure disgust, “— _personal drama_. Not during work hours.”

“Yes, sir,” Nat answers, but her voice is sing-song-y and she’s got a smirk on her face.

Fury glares at her a moment, then just huffs and stalks away. Natasha is literally the only person in the entire _world_ who could get away with that. Steve is pretty sure if _he_ tried it, Fury would shoot lasers out of his eyes, and melt Steve down to a small pile of goo.

But Nat is unflinching, and chuckles at Fury’s retreating back before she turns back to her work and then sighs sharply, an abrupt change of mood.

“What was that?” Steve asks her, eternally slightly startled by how quickly her demeanor can turn around. It’s unsettling, and quite frankly, a little frightening.

Nat makes a noise in the back of her throat like a growl, says something under her breath in Russian that Steve doesn’t recognize except to know that it’s a curse word, and then says, “Nothing. Rumlow is just doing everything in his power to stick his shockingly inadequate dick in all of my research. He just sent me an email, I forwarded it to you.”

Steve rolls his eyes as his computer dings with the notification for Nat’s email. He quickly scans the message, scowling at the blatant mansplaining and inaccurate “fact-checking” Detective Rumlow — one of the cops who comes in regularly to get journalists to do his job for him, and Steve’s former coworker — is subjecting Natasha to, despite the concrete fact that Nat is ten thousand times better at her job than Brock Rumlow could ever even _hope_ to be at his.

“Want me to punch him?” Steve offers. It’s not a joke. Brock Rumlow is an asshole.

Nat laughs anyway. “I can handle that myself, thanks,” she tells him, and she absolutely can, Steve knows she can, would probably do a better job at it than Steve, even, “but I’ll let you know.”

Through all the texts, and gifs, and emojis, and nightly FaceTime calls, Steve didn’t even realize how much he’s _truly_ missed Bucky until Bucky shows up at his apartment the next morning, looking fucking adorable in the glasses he rarely wears, with a bright smile, and two cups of coffee. Steve kisses him urgently before he has the chance to speak, pulling Bucky’s body into his arms so quick, Bucky has to spread both of his arms out at his sides just so the coffee he’s holding won’t drop to the floor. Fuck the coffee. Steve _needs_ Bucky.

Bucky mumbles a laugh against Steve’s lips. “Hey, tiger,” he says softly as Steve tilts his head to press a kiss to Bucky’s stubbly cheek too, just _so_ fucking glad to be in physical proximity to him again. “I missed you, too.”

“I don’t like not seeing you,” Steve grumps, moving on to kiss his way up Bucky’s jawline, towards his ear, which he nips playfully.

Bucky laughs again, and pulls away from Steve’s tickling breath on his neck. He presses one of the coffee cups into Steve’s chest until Steve takes it in one hand, and leans in to kiss his lips one more time before stepping back out of the doorway.

“I got you your favorite,” Bucky tells him, indicating the coffee. “Your year-round peppermint mocha with breve, you weirdo.”

“Flavors don’t need seasons when you love them,” Steve retorts, grinning and then taking a sip. It’s perfect. “Mm. Thank you.”

“So where’s this farmers market?”

Steve takes Bucky’s hand, interlacing their fingers and squeezing. “Come on,” he murmurs, warm, “I’ll show you.”

“You know, it’s really more like pumpkin spice season,” Bucky remarks, running his metal hand delicately over a small pile of plums, the blue of his eyes trained on their rich purple as he ever-so-gently squeezes one to test its ripeness. “You could always try that.”

Those lovely eyes flash briefly towards Steve, a teasing glint in his direction, before dropping back down to the plums.

Steve smirks. “I don’t like pumpkin spice,” he replies, and then shakes his head when Bucky looks at him like he just kicked a puppy. “Not in coffee, anyway. Give me every pumpkin pastry in the world, I’ll be happy, but I’ll pass on the PSLs.”

Bucky narrows his eyes at Steve behind his glasses for a moment, but then shrugs and smiles. “Okay, fair enough,” he relents, reaching out for Steve’s hand.

Steve laces his warm fingers through Bucky’s cool, metal ones. “How sensitive is it?” he asks, wiggling his fingers to indicate Bucky’s hand as they move on through the market.

Bucky smiles to himself, and then pulls Steve to the side between stands. He turns them toward each other, raising their joined hands and running his thumb lightly over Steve’s bottom lip, triggering goosebumps all over Steve’s body. His eyes are so warm today, they look almost green.

“I can feel,” he whispers, low enough that Steve leans in further to hear him, “every line in your skin. The warmth of your breath on my fingers.” He releases Steve’s hand to slide his into Steve’s hair. “I can feel more acutely with this hand than I can with my natural one.” Bucky’s breath blows over Steve’s face as he grins. “Wanna see?”

Steve shivers bodily. He very much _does_ want to see. He wants to know everything about Bucky, everything he’s ever felt, ever thought, ever seen. Every opinion, and touch, and expression. Steve wants to know it all.

Wordlessly, Steve nods. Bucky’s smile grows even more and he pulls Steve in by the back of his head to kiss him.

Steve had been regretting not wearing a sweater to ward off the early-autumn chill, but in Bucky’s arms, he feels totally warm.

When Bucky pulls away, he links their hands again, and pulls Steve gently to keep moving.

They continue on like that, hand in hand, perusing various stands at their leisure, as the conversation turns to hobbies, and Bucky asks Steve about what sort of things he likes to do to unwind.

“I don’t know,” Steve answers after thinking about it for a minute. “I guess, if I need to unwind, I go for a run, or lift weights, or—well, masturbate.”

Bucky lets out a cute little giggle, but nods. “Physical activity does release a lot of endorphins,” he says fairly, “as does orgasming.”

“All right,” Steve complains, “that felt _very_ clinical as a response to the hot guy you’re seeing talking about touching himself.”

Steve grins, pleased, when that pulls a full-bellied laugh out of Bucky.

“Sorry,” Bucky says, not sounding very sorry at all, “sometimes the therapist comes out unbidden.” Then he leans into Steve’s arm and murmurs, low and seductive in his ear, “So you were telling me about how you make yourself come?”

“ _Fuck_ ,” Steve breathes as a shiver runs down his spine and a relevant area of his anatomy perks up in interest. He smirks sideways at Bucky. “Quit playin’ so dirty unless you’re ready to step up to the plate.”

He means it just to tease, he has no intention of asking Bucky to go any further than they have thus far, but he _missed_ him like burning, and his Little Shit tendencies are jumping out in full force.

But Bucky just looks at him sideways with bright eyes, and smiles like a secret, and _hoo boy_ , suddenly Steve’s dick is awake and ready to party.

“So what do _you_ do to unwind, then?” Steve asks him quickly, in a desperate attempt not to pop a boner in public. “If not ‘physical activity’?”

“I mean, I _do_ work out,” Bucky protests, laughing again, and Steve wants to do nothing else ever but make this man laugh. No work, no running, he’ll even give up masturbating. Just Bucky’s bright laughter and gorgeous smile forever, please. “But that’s because it’s _good_ for me, and it helps manage stress, not because I _want_ to.”

“Okay,” Steve chuckles back, “so then what _do_ you do?”

Bucky’s incredibly gorgeous eyes meet Steve’s, and he bites his smile before he says, like he’s shy about it, “I really like to play my piano.”

Steve’s eyes may or may not bulge out of their sockets. “You play piano?” he asks, much more eagerly than he probably should. But holy fuck, that’s _hot!_

Bucky nods. “My mom used to be a concert pianist,” he explains, “so growing up, we always had this beautiful baby grand in the house. No matter what our financial situation was, my parents never sold that thing. It took up half the apartment when I was little, but that’s where it belonged. They still have it, actually. It’s my mom’s greatest treasure that isn’t a person she birthed.”

Steve snorts unexpectedly, and _loudly_.

“Anyway, I guess when I was like three, I sat down at that piano and told my mom I wanted to play, so she started teaching me. It was kind of our special mother-son time, since my sister had just been born, and I loved it, so we kept up the tradition until I was fifteen.”

“You stopped playing then?” Steve asks, interested.

He must have imagined the way Bucky’s eyebrows furrowed at that, because when he looks up at Steve, his expression is clear and smiling.

“Yeah, just didn’t really have the time anymore,” Bucky shrugs. “I missed it, though, so after I got my prosthetic and moved into my apartment, I bought the little upright I’ve got now. Took some time to get back the skill I had before, and figure out the muscle memory with my prosthetic, but even when I’m struggling through, playing the piano always brings me joy in a way that nothing else can. The power of music, I guess,” he says, smiling shyly again. “That, and it always brings up really lovely memories with my mom.”

Steve brings their joined hands back up to his mouth and kisses the back of Bucky’s cool, metal hand. He doesn’t think that Bucky will ever stop surprising him with how perfect he actually is. He doesn’t ever want him to.

“I’d love to hear you play sometime,” Steve murmurs softly against the metal. Then: “If that would be okay,” he adds, hoping that Bucky won’t feel pressured.

Bucky’s cheeks light up in that pretty fucking blush of his, and his eyes crinkle. “Well then,” he says, “maybe I’ll have to play for you sometime.”

And then he tugs on Steve’s hand again, and they continue on in comfortable silence for a few minutes.

After Bucky has stopped at two more stands, and bought a small piece of art, Steve finally works up the courage to ask him the question that’s been on his mind for days.

“Hey,” he begins tentatively, as Bucky thumbs through a collection of vinyls at another stand, “can I ask you something?”

Bucky’s smile is _the prettiest thing in the world_. “Yeah, of course,” he says, his eyes bright as he straightens, and turns attentively to Steve.

Steve is _weak_. “I don’t mean this in like...a bad way, or anything,” he begins.

Bucky’s smile doesn’t falter, but his eyebrows do knit together a little. “Okay…?”

“I was just… _wondering_ —”

“Steve,” Bucky laughs, reaching out to hold onto Steve’s arm. “What is it?”

Steve takes a deep breath. He’s a grown up, he can do this. “Are you seeing anyone else right now?” he asks in a rush. “Or, y’know...sleeping with anyone?”

Bucky’s smile grows heartbreakingly soft.

Steve’s mouth keeps babbling. “I mean, obviously you have every right to do whatever the fuck you want, we haven’t, like, talked about this or anything, I just thought I should ask, in case—”

“Steve.” Bucky’s voice cuts through Steve’s rambling and stills him instantly. “I’m not. Only you.”

It feels like the sun is rising in Steve’s chest. “Really?” he asks, and it comes out as a huff of relief.

Bucky nods. His eyes are soft, gentle laugh lines pressing at the corners.

“Me too,” Steve tells him quietly. “Only you.”

Bucky squeezes his hand. “Okay.”

“Okay.”

There’s something about spending time with Steve Rogers that makes Bucky feel like he’s floating. And he’s not sure _how_ it happened, but after an entire week of not seeing each other, he’s now getting the chance to see Steve twice in one day. The farmers market was fun, and Bucky only left because he had an afternoon group session, rescheduled from it’s usual Thursday slot because of an emergency at the center, but Steve had pouted so much when they had to say goodbye that one thing had led to another, and now Bucky is only home to shower and change before going over to Steve’s tonight, too.

And nothing has really changed, but Bucky feels it now. Feels it _hard_.

He’s ready.

The hyperactive butterflies in his stomach show no sign of going away as Bucky dries off from his shower, scrunching at his damp hair with the t-shirt he wore yesterday, and trying to decide what ensemble from his wardrobe most conveys, _I’m ready for you to fuck me senseless, you huge, sweet hunk of a man._

And then — _of fucking course_ — someone knocks on his door.

Bucky isn’t expecting anyone, obviously, which is why his heart drops at the sound. He just _knows_ this is the next in the line of chaos that is going to stop him from _finally_ getting fucked by Steve Rogers.

And, well, he’s not wrong.

Sweatpants and t-shirt slipped quickly on, Bucky opens the door, after peering through his peephole, to a wince and a scowl.

“RJ, are you okay?” he asks immediately, and RJ rolls his eyes, but nods.

“Yeah, it’s just....” RJ has a hard time asking for help, so Bucky waits for him to take his time. “My roommates have people over again, and they’re using, and being really loud, and—”

He cuts himself off, but Bucky gets it. He opens his door wider to let RJ in.

As RJ finds his favorite spot on the couch, Bucky makes an excuse, and ducks into his bedroom, shutting the door behind him.

Steve answers the phone before the first ring is even complete.

“Sweetheart!” he exclaims in greeting.

“Hey, Cap,” Bucky answers, and he can _hear_ the disappointment in his own voice.

Apparently, Steve can too. “Don’t tell me you’re cancelling!” he cries.

“Sorry.” Bucky winces. “Just a rain check. I had something come up. Well, some _one._ ”

“Everything okay?” Steve sounds legitimately concerned, and Bucky’s heart aches for him.

“Yeah, I just— Family thing.” Bucky waves it off.

“I didn’t realize you had family in the city.”

“Just the one,” Bucky explains. “Found family.”

“Got it,” Steve says. Bucky can tell he really understands. “Okay, well I hope everything’s all right with your family member. Tomorrow?”

“Thanks, Steve,” Bucky sighs, relieved and sad. “I think he just needs a safe space right now. Tomorrow, _definitely_.”

“Then it’s a date.”

Bucky smiles. Pauses. “I miss you,” he mumbles. It’s ridiculous. They saw each other this morning. It’s only been a few hours. But it’s true. Bucky misses Steve already.

There’s a smile in Steve’s voice when he answers. “I miss you, too.”

After they say goodbye, and Bucky has taken a moment to pull his twitterpated ass together, he walks back into the living room to find RJ scrolling through his Netflix account on the TV.

“Staying the night?” he asks as he passes RJ to go look for food in his currently-empty refrigerator.

“If that’s okay,” RJ calls back to him over the back of the couch.

Bucky emerges from the kitchen with the take-out menu of the Indian restaurant down the block, having immediately come up empty for anything edible in his actual home, as he knew he would.

“Always okay, RJ,” he says, dropping the menu into RJ’s lap as he plops down on the couch next to him. “It’s literally why I have a pull-out couch.”

“Thanks,” RJ murmurs, looking down at the menu. He only glances at it for a second before handing it back. “Why did you give this to me? The usual is fine.”

Bucky laughs. “Fine,” he says, picking up his phone to call in their usual, massive order. “I was just giving you the option for something new.”

“Can we get three butter chickens this time?” RJ asks as Bucky dials. “I’m _starving_.”

“Three?” Bucky protests. “We order like seven entrees and four appetizers, and you want _another_ butter chicken?”

“Yeah.”

Bucky sighs. “All right.” The other side picks up, and he starts rattling off their usual order. Halfway through, the woman taking the order recognizes it and calls him by name.

“Yeah, the card you have on file is fine,” Bucky tells her when they’re finished.

“Okay,” she responds. “Give us twenty or thirty minutes, okay?”

“Sounds great, thanks.” Bucky hangs up.

RJ is still scrolling through Netflix. “Nothing looks good,” he sighs, throwing his head back on the couch and flinging the remote dramatically in Bucky’s direction.

“ _Nothing?_ ” Bucky asks skeptically, pushing his glasses up his nose. “You looked through _all of Netflix_ , did you?”

RJ just mumbles grumpily. But when he thinks Bucky is distracted with finding something to watch, he pulls at his shirt around his chest, and then crosses his arms, scowling.

“What’s wrong?” Bucky asks, concerned. He’s aware that he’s being an overprotective parent to an eighteen-year-old he did not sire, but who cares? He loves this kid, and no one else has ever looked out for RJ before, so Bucky sure as shit is going to now.

“Nothing,” RJ answers, surly.

“Is it your binder?”

RJ sighs. He takes a minute, probably deciding whether or not to admit it. Then he mutters, “Yeah.”

“Does it hurt?” Bucky asks. That could be dangerous.

“No,” RJ sighs again, giving up pretense finally, “it’s just the only one I have, and it’s the one I bought when I first got here, so the elastic is giving out.”

Bucky’s frown deepens. “Why don’t you have more than that one?” he asks.

“Because shockingly, working for a non-profit doesn’t make me loads of cash, and I have bills to pay and still need to eat. So.” The center found a position for RJ on Bucky’s request when RJ moved to the city, but it’s true, they can’t afford to pay much over minimum wage right now.

“RJ, why didn’t you tell me?” Bucky asks softly.

RJ shrugs. “You already do enough for me,” he says bluntly. “You pay my rent, and...and you let me come over, and you give me food and stuff, I’m not going to let you give me an allowance, too.”

Bucky nods, already reaching over the back of the couch for his wallet, where it sits on the console table there. “I understand that,” he says, “but this isn’t like you want overpriced sneakers or something, this is something you need.” He takes out his debit card and hands it to RJ. “Don’t buy less than three, okay?” he orders. “Use my laptop.”

After they’ve eaten enough for at least five people, and stashed the leftovers in the fridge, RJ falls asleep halfway through the movie they put on, and Bucky throws a blanket over him before heading to bed himself. It’s always a crapshoot whether or not RJ will be awake long enough to set up the pull-out bed, but the sofa is just as comfortable, if not more, so Bucky’s not worried.

He sends a text to Steve while he’s brushing his teeth to make sure he’s awake and not otherwise occupied, and Steve sends him back thirteen heart emojis, which most likely means he’s good to go. So as soon as Bucky has donned pajamas and slipped into bed, he calls Steve on FaceTime.

Steve’s face pops up after only a few rings. He’s also in bed, and he’s shirtless. Even just seeing him bare shoulders up, Bucky’s mouth literally waters.

“Hey, Buck,” Steve greets him, smiling all dopey and cute.

“Hi, babe,” Bucky replies, equally dopey.

“I didn’t know if I’d be hearing from you tonight,” Steve says, shifting in bed so he’s on his side, phone propped up on the bed next to him. “How’s your family member?”

“He’s good,” Bucky says, already feeling every stress he’s had all day melting off of him with the sound of Steve’s voice, the sight of his face. “He’s asleep on the couch. Sometimes he just needs to crash somewhere he can feel taken care of, and for him, that’s my place.”

“Can I ask about him?” Steve asks. “You don’t have to tell me if you don’t want, I’m just curious.”

“No, it’s okay,” Bucky replies, and he can’t help the smile that pulls at the corners of his mouth whenever he’s looking at Steve’s gorgeous face. “Like I said, we’re not legally or genetically related, but we’re kind of all each other has right now. He found me by chance while he was trying to get out of a bad situation, and I took him in. Somewhere down the line, I got attached.”

“Down the line?” Steve asks, raising an eyebrow. Bucky bites his lip at the unfamiliar warmth of being known.

He laughs, softly, so it doesn’t wake RJ through the walls. “Okay, fine,” he admits, “immediately, what’s the difference?”

Steve chuckles. “So is he like...a sibling? A nephew? What kind of family is he?”

Bucky wets his lips. He’s never told anyone the whole story behind RJ coming into his life. RJ isn’t one of his clients, and they have both been clear with each other that they do not have a therapeutic relationship — RJ goes to the group to be with the other kids, not for his own therapy, and they’ve gotten away with that because RJ is actually on the clock with the LGBTQ center during groups. But Bucky has never felt comfortable disclosing this part of his own life with anyone, one of many aspects of himself he chooses not to share. And yet he finds himself telling Steve without hesitation.

“He’s kind of my kid,” Bucky confesses. Steve looks surprised, but there’s nothing judgmental in his face at all. “I mean, he’s not even young enough for that to make sense, but.... So he was trapped in this fundamentalist religious cult—”

“Jesus,” Steve whispers — and clearly doesn’t realize how funny that particular interjection is, so Bucky doesn’t point it out.

“His parents were making him live as a girl because they didn’t ‘believe’ in being transgender, as if that makes it not real. So he ran away to the city, and met me when he tried to pick my pocket in Times Square and I caught him.”

Steve laughs. “Of course you did.” There it is again. _He knows me, he sees me_.

“Rather than turning him in to the police, because _fuck_ that, I let him stay with me and found him a job,” Bucky continues. He shrugs. “I’ve been that lost, desperate kid searching for somewhere safe to land. I couldn’t turn him away.”

Steve is frowning again. “Have you?” he asks softly.

Bucky blinks. He didn’t mean to let that slip. Hasn’t told _anyone_ about the life he lived a long time ago, the one he’s been trying to escape ever since. The reason he doesn’t go by James anymore. He wasn’t really planning on telling Steve about it either — a memory he’s so actively tried to forget, that it hadn’t yet registered to him that getting close to another person means unearthing it for good. But that feeling of being seen, being _known_ , had caught him off guard. Made it feel, for just a moment, like Steve knew _everything_. Even that.

“You don’t have to tell me,” Steve says again, clearly reading the expression on Bucky’s face.

But Bucky wonders how long, really, he can keep it buried.

“Honey, it’s okay,” Steve is insisting. Bucky must look totally stricken, can kind of see it in the small image of his own face on his phone. “Forget I asked. Tell me more about your family member.”

Bucky shakes his head to rid himself of his memories for the moment. For tonight, at least.

“Right,” he says. “RJ. That’s his name. Um. Yeah, so I took him in, and he lived with me for a while. I bought a pull-out couch for him to sleep on, and got him a job. He’s really independent, though, and he doesn’t want me taking care of him all the time, so eventually he moved out. But he was drowning in rent, even with his job and his shitty roommates, so I pay that now. Which isn’t his favorite thing, but I insisted, and he needed it. He comes by when he needs some peace. I’m just glad I can give that to him.”

“It sounds like you love him a lot,” Steve says. “You’re really good to him.”

Bucky sighs, and hears the rest of what he’s never told anyone _—_ not a soul, not even RJ — about this story spill out of his mouth. “Honestly, I was _inches_ away from legally adopting him myself, but then he was granted emancipation, and I think he wanted that more.” He pauses, and wets his dry lips again. “But it’s like he’s my kid, I don’t know. I’d do just about anything for him.”

Steve is quiet, and Bucky is suddenly afraid he’s said too much. That this is what finally drives Steve away. That maybe taking on a man who wanted to adopt a teenager only seventeen years his junior, who still considers himself that teenager’s parent, even though the kid is legally an adult and doesn’t necessarily feel the same — this weird emotional attachment Bucky can’t help about himself — maybe this isn’t what Steve wants at all. Maybe this is what does it.

But when he looks up at the screen, Steve is giving him this _look_. This intense look that, even through a screen, drives into Bucky’s heart, and settles there.

“God,” Steve breathes at last, “you’re so _good._ ”

A nervous laugh escapes Bucky’s lips. “What do you mean?” he asks.

“You’re just....” Steve trails off. “You’re so good,” he just repeats.

He’s still got this expression on his face that Bucky can’t quite read. Or rather, he thinks maybe he _can_ read it, but his heart isn’t ready to acknowledge what it means.

“Okay, enough about me,” he deflects, laughing to brush off whatever intensity this moment has wrought. “How was your afternoon?”

But Steve shakes his head, his expression still the same. “There will _never_ — and I mean this,” he says firmly, “be enough about you.”

🎈

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **Next time:**   
> 


	5. Five: October 4th

When Steve wakes up, much earlier than he’d planned, to his alarm softly but persistently beeping next to his head, his eyes open to his propped-up phone screen, where Bucky is still gently snoring. A kind of tenderness bubbles up in his chest. He vaguely remembers Bucky drifting off last night right before he did, and not finding the willpower within himself to end the call on Bucky’s gorgeous, peaceful face. He’s been contemplating it for a while, but for the first time, watching Bucky sleeping over FaceTime in the pale light of morning, Steve is finally sure. He knows.

He’s in love with Bucky. He just is.

Simple as that.

“Buck,” Steve murmurs, voice thick with sleep. “Sweetheart. You gotta get up.”

Bucky’s whole face scrunches before his eyes blink open slowly, and focus on Steve. “Stevie?” he asks, groggy, and Steve’s heart swells at the nickname that falls so easily from Bucky’s sleepy lips for the first time, that Steve wonders how long Bucky’s called him that in his own head, unspoken. “You’re still here?”

“Yeah, we fell asleep, remember?” Steve asks. Bucky frowns.

“Oh yeah,” he mumbles slowly. “What time is it?”

“Seven,” Steve answers, and Bucky’s eyes widen.

“Oh, shit,” he breathes. “I didn’t set an alarm before I fell asleep. I have a meeting in an hour.”

Steve smiles. He _loves_ Bucky. “Then you better get up,” he says fondly. “Meanwhile, I could have slept in, but I forgot to turn _off_ my alarm.”

Bucky makes a sympathetic face, waking up a little more as he reaches out for his glasses, then puts them on. And then he smiles. “Go back to sleep, honey,” he croons softly, picking up his phone and disconnecting it from its power cord as he sits up. The bird’s nest of tangled hair on his head, and the way he always looks so fucking cute in his glasses makes Steve melt. “I’ll see you later, right?”

“ _Yes_ ,” Steve stresses. “As soon as your schedule clears up. I’m serious, call me the _second_ you’re free, I’ll come right over.”

“I will,” Bucky swears, “I promise. As soon as I can, I’ll let you know. Just go to sleep now, baby, okay?”

“Okay,” Steve mumbles, and stops fighting the waves of sleep that are trying to wash over him.

The last thing he sees before he closes his eyes again is Bucky’s perfect smile shining through the screen at him.

He’s only vaguely aware of the sound of the call ending as he drifts back to sleep.

RJ stirs as Bucky, fresh out of a tornado-fast shower, and clearly failing his attempts to be as quiet as he can, slips past him to speedily make himself a cup of coffee to-go before his early meeting.

“Where are you going?” RJ grumbles, poking his bed-rumpled head up over the back of the couch to look at Bucky.

“Meeting at the center,” Bucky calls back to him from the coffee maker. “I’ve got a full day, so I won’t be around. And I won’t make you leave or anything, but I, uh...I’ve got someone coming over later.”

RJ makes a high-pitched, sing-songy _Ooooh!_ noise. “A special someone?” he asks. “Why didn’t you tell me you had a _special_ someone?”

Bucky rolls his eyes and pokes his head around the corner to glare at RJ’s smug, smirking face. “ _That’s_ why,” he says, pointing at that smirk. “Should I plan on you being here so I can keep him away from you?”

RJ laughs. “No,” he says, “I’ll be out of here after I shower, and eat half the leftovers from last night. I’ve got stuff at the center today, too.”

“Okay.” Bucky closes the lid on his coffee-filled travel mug, and strides out into the living room, a secret sense of relief flooding him that his family life and romantic life aren’t going to collide just yet. He throws one arm around RJ’s head and hugs, despite RJ’s squawked protest, planting a kiss on the top of his head for good measure. “Call me later if you need, and text me when you get home tonight. Love you!” he calls on his way out the door.

“Love you, too,” RJ yells back at him, reluctantly, right before the door swings shut.

This, Bucky decides, as Steve’s big hand cards through his hair, a warm, broad thumb brushing over his forehead, is how he wants to spend every Sunday from now on. No more meetings, no more responsibilities, just getting his hair pet by a sweet man, staring softly into his eyes.

It would be sickening if Bucky wasn’t enjoying it so damn much.

Steve wasted exactly zero time when he got to Bucky’s apartment, not even taking a moment to look around at the place, just stepping inside the second Bucky opened the door, and cradling Bucky’s face between his big hands as he pressed forward. Just kissing and kissing and mouths opening together and tongues and teeth and more, more, more.

Now, Bucky is lying on his back on his bed, staring up at Steve, who either won’t or can’t stop stroking Bucky’s hair, leaned up on his elbow with his arm looped over Bucky’s head, fingers of the other hand stroking circles into the skin of Bucky’s hip, just under the hem of his shirt.

It’s perfect.

Steve’s eyes flit down from watching Bucky’s hair catch the light as he pushes his fingers through it to meet Bucky’s eyes, which haven’t left his once. Steve’s eyes — cornflower blue, and that spectacular halo of green — crinkle as he smiles, then leans down to press his lips softly but insistently against Bucky’s mouth. Bucky hums contentedly into the kiss.

When Steve pulls away, he hums, too.

Bucky smiles up at him. Steve is looking at him with a kind of intensity that Bucky is just starting to get used to seeing in those clear, blue-green eyes. He seems to come to a conclusion. Bucky waits.

Steve wets his lips. “I’m gonna be weird about this,” he says decisively.

Bucky’s smile widens. “You’re weird about everything, what’s new?”

“Hey,” Steve protests softly, offended. “Shut up.”

Bucky giggles. He feels warm.

“I just wanted to—” Steve starts again. “I mean—” He lets out a sharp, irritated sigh, then blurts, “I _really_ like you.”

Bucky has never felt this soft. Like all of his hard edges and sharp corners have been lovingly worn smooth by the cresting waves of Steve’s open tenderness. He reaches up and touches Steve’s face lightly, just his fingertips. “That feeling is mutual, Rogers,” he murmurs, low.

A deeply happy expression washes over Steve’s face. “Okay,” he whispers, fingertips echoing Bucky’s across his jaw. “Good to know.”

Bucky keeps grinning uncontrollably at him as Steve takes a deep breath.

“Sooo...,” he says slowly, “I was wondering if you wanted to make this thing official?”

“How do you mean?” Bucky hears himself ask, somehow, over the sudden pounding of his heart in his ears.

Steve smiles crookedly. “I _mean_ ,” he says, brushing a lock of hair behind Bucky’s ear, “like— I want to be in a real relationship with you. Exclusive, and all that.” He sighs. “I want you to be my boyfriend, and I want to spend every single day with you. I know you already told me you’re not actually sleeping with anyone else, but I just thought maybe we could—”

Bucky moves loose fingers from Steve’s cheekbone to his lips to stop his babbling. “Yeah, Steve,” he breathes out fervently. “Yes.”

Steve blinks. “Wait, yes?”

Bucky laughs. “Yes,” he confirms breathlessly, his heart continuing to pound loudly in his chest. “Steve, I—I _really_ like you, too. I wanna be your boyfriend.”

Steve surges forward to bestow upon Bucky an _extremely_ happy, extremely _sloppy_ kiss, and rolls all the way on top of him, the full weight of his body pressing down on him as Bucky bursts into peals of laughter against Steve’s smiling mouth. He’s very glad he’s wearing contacts today, because if he were wearing glasses, they would for sure have been knocked right off his face from this.

When Steve lifts his head enough to brush his nose softly against Bucky’s, Bucky runs his hands over Steve’s strong arms, and breathes, “Are you sure? We haven’t even—?”

But Steve cuts him off with a pointed raised eyebrow, and a short roll of his hips against Bucky’s, causing a rush of blood through Bucky’s body to the affected area.

“I don’t think that’s gonna be an issue, Buck,” Steve murmurs, and strokes a thumb tenderly over Bucky’s jawline.

A slow smile crests across Bucky’s face. “Me either,” he whispers.

And there it is again. That feeling. That surety.

He’s _ready_.

But Steve is starting to pull away, pushing himself up, off of Bucky, and off of the bed, as he says, “I think this is a cause for celebration. It’s not every day the most gorgeous person in the entire world agrees to be your boyfriend, right? I’m gonna take you out for ice cream!”

As Steve is talking, Bucky sits up with him, chasing him to the edge of the bed, but he doesn’t stand up with him. Instead, he reaches out and takes Steve’s hand, and Steve turns to him with attentively raised eyebrows as Bucky pulls him back to stand in-between his knees. Pulls until Steve bends down to let Bucky kiss him meaningfully. Pointedly. Bucky even reaches out with his other hand, and curls his fingers under the waistband of Steve’s jeans to try to make his point clear.

When their lips part, Bucky gazes up at Steve, and bites down on his lip, a question.

Steve blinks, a small, awed smile tugging at his mouth. “Really?” he asks softly.

Bucky nods. Yes. _Yes_.

Steve’s smile curls into a grin as he presses forward again, and Bucky scootches back on the bed to make room for him.

“Are you telling me,” he begins teasingly, slowly pushing Bucky down on his back again, “that _all_ I had to do here was verbally commit? Why didn’t you just tell me that, honey? I woulda asked you to be my boyfriend _months_ ago.”

Bucky laughs, and shoves at Steve with absolutely no intention of actually pushing him away. “We only just _met_ like two months ago,” he points out.

Steve shakes his head, a sweet, earnest glint in his smiling eyes. “I woulda asked you that first night, baby,” he breathes like a confession, “if it wouldn’t’ve made me seem like an absolute lunatic.”

“ _Seem?_ ” Bucky cries, still laughing. “That would’ve actually _made_ you a lunatic, you mook.”

“I love you.”

And suddenly, Bucky stops still, wide-eyed, holding his breath. He searches Steve’s face to try to figure out if Steve is still joking, but he finds absolutely nothing but simple sincerity.

“Don’t say anything,” Steve whispers, like a secret, his eyes as clear as Bucky has ever seen them. “I don’t want you to say it back. I want you to _know_ when you do, and I don’t care how long that takes. But I do, I know.” He wets his lips, and the corners of his eyes crinkle with happiness. “I love you.”

Slowly, and with all the tenderness he can manage to convey, Bucky reaches up, pulls Steve down by the back of his neck, and kisses him. Hard. A lot. As much as he is allowed, in this moment. He may never be given a moment like this again, a moment where someone nearly as good at Steve Rogers loves someone like Bucky Barnes.

But Steve kisses him, too. Kisses him _hard_. And when he breaks from Bucky’s lips to lay hot, wet kisses across Bucky’s jaw, and down his neck, he whispers _I love you_ into Bucky’s skin, over, and over, and over. And Bucky knows he’s never done anything in his life to deserve this man. But he’ll be absolutely damned if he doesn’t try with everything inside him to earn this love that Steve so freely just _gives_ him.

It’s Bucky’s hands, again, that pull at Steve’s shirt first. But Steve moves with him, allowing Bucky to pull the shirt up over his head in one fast tug, and toss it aside. And Steve is not at all far behind, skimming his own hands under Bucky’s shirt, and up Bucky’s sides, rucking up the fabric as he does, and then pulling it off over Bucky’s head. Then it’s their mouths pressing and opening against each other, and teeth scraping over lips, and panting air into each other’s mouths as they fumble with each other’s jeans.

And then Steve is kicking out of his jeans, and pulling Bucky’s off, and they are just two thin layers of fabric from being totally skin on skin, totally each other’s—

—and that’s when Bucky’s phone starts to ring.

Bucky actually growls out loud at the interruption, but Steve barely notices until Bucky is pulling out of his arms, reaching for the phone on his nightstand.

“ _Shit_ ,” Bucky hisses as he stretches for it. “I’m _so_ sorry,” he tells Steve in an emphatic rush of words, “I gotta take this. This ringtone means it’s one of my kids, and they only call this late when they’re in crisis —”

“No, no, please!” Steve insists, rolling his warm weight off of Bucky, despite the obvious tenting in both of their boxer briefs. “Go ahead, my god.”

Bucky manages to grab the phone, climbing up out of bed as he answers without having a chance to look at the caller ID.

“I’m here,” are the first words out of his mouth, while he pushes his hair out of his face, and tries to locate his clothes, “just let me get somewhere private, okay?”

Whoever is on the other end lets out a noise like a sob, and Bucky winces, trying not to let his heart absolutely break.

“You’re okay,” he insists, his voice level and calm, “I’m here. Just a second.”

Bucky finds his pants, and pulls them on quickly, mouthing ‘ _Sorry!_ ’ at Steve again (who waves him off), and then ducks out of the bedroom, and slips into the living room for some privacy.

“Okay, I’m here. What’s going on?”

“Bucky,” a strangled voice chokes out. “It’s Billy. I need help.”

“Billy,” Bucky repeats. Shit. “What is it? What’s happening?”

Billy makes another sobbing noise. Bucky can clearly hear over the phone how uneven his breathing is.

“Billy, I need you to take a deep breath, okay?” he instructs calmly.

Shakily, Billy obeys. Both his inhale and his exhale come in jerky gasps, but he does his best.

“Good,” Bucky praises. “One more time.”

In, and out. Smoother this time. Better.

“That’s good,” Bucky tells him again. “Can you tell me what’s going on?”

“Teddy and I had a fight,” Billy confesses shakily. “I didn’t tell him I was using again. I fucked up, I didn’t mean to. It just _hurt_ , and I needed it— But I stopped a few days ago, and now I’m in withdrawals again, and he noticed. And he was being so fucking _nice_ about it, when _I’m_ the one who fucked up, and we got in a fight about it, and I told him to go home. But I can’t stop shaking, and I keep throwing up, and it _hurts_ , Bucky. I want to go back, I just want to go back.”

“Hey,” Bucky responds when it’s clear Billy has finished, “I know it hurts, Billy, but you’ve been through this before, remember? Remember how you got through it? You don’t need to do this alone, you should go to the hospital, they can help you there.”

“I can’t,” Billy sobs. “Bucky, they’ll take me away from my foster parents, they’ll make me go somewhere else, I don’t want to go somewhere else, I fucked up, I fucked—”

“Billy,” Bucky cuts in firmly. “You did not fuck up. You have an addiction, and that’s not your fault. You had a slip, and you’re dealing with it. You’re doing the right thing, but you don’t have to be alone.”

“Please, Bucky,” Billy pleads, and his voice is so heartrendingly vulnerable, he almost sounds like a little kid. He _is_ a kid. “Please, I really don’t want them to take my parents away, _please_.”

Bucky takes a breath. As a professional, his only recommendation here should be for Billy to seek medical attention. As a former kid with a troubled past, though, he gets it. Even though they’ve been doing everything right, the state could blame Billy’s relapse on the freedom his foster parents have tried to responsibly give him, as a teenager who’s not far from being a legal adult. Bucky wets his lips, torn. Until he makes a decision.

“Okay,” he says at last. “Where are you, kid?”

“The center,” Billy replies, and Bucky frowns.

“Is someone there?” The center should be closed by now.

“No, it’s locked,” Billy says. “I’m outside, on the steps.”

Bucky nods, even though Billy can’t see him. “Okay,” he says again, “I’m on my way to you. Be safe, okay? Move if you have to, and then tell me where you are. I’m five or ten minutes away, will you be all right until then?”

“Yeah,” Billy says weakly, but Bucky can hear the relief in his voice. “Yeah, I can do that.”

“Good,” Bucky tells him. “Can I call Teddy?”

Billy sniffs. “Yeah.”

“I’m also going to call a nurse practitioner I know, if you give me permission,” Bucky continues, searching around for his keys. “Don’t worry, she’s very good, and she’s very discreet, she gets it. She can help you.”

“Okay,” Billy says. “Yeah, that’s okay.”

Bucky knows that Billy is trusting him with his whole life right now. He’s not going to let this kid down.

“Ten minutes, tops, Billy,” Bucky repeats gently, as he finds his keys on the coffee table. “You call me again if something changes, okay?”

Billy agrees, and they hang up. Bucky ducks back into the bedroom.

Steve has, mercifully, put his pants back on, but, cruelly, not his shirt, and is sitting patiently on the bed when Bucky returns.

“Everything okay?” he asks, a look of genuine concern etched into his soft, kind features.

Bucky winces, scooping his t-shirt off the floor and slipping it on over his head, then making sure his fly is done up.

“I have to go,” he tells Steve as he does this. “I’m so, so fucking sorry, I promise we will actually do this soon, but one of my kids needs me right now, and I have to go.”

“Oh my god, don’t apologize!” Steve insists, scooting forward to plant his feet on the floor. “Go, please! I’m fine, honey, I’ll be fine.”

“You’re absolutely welcome to stay here until I get back, if you want,” Bucky says, slipping his feet into his shoes, and looking around for his leather jacket. “Or you can go home, whatever you want, just lock the inside lock if you’re leaving. Or stay! I might be a while, though,” he adds apologetically.

“Baby, go,” Steve laughs understandingly. “I will figure it out, go be a hero.”

Bucky grabs his jacket to head out, and then doubles back, and hurriedly presses his lips to Steve’s, just for a moment.

“I’ll call you tomorrow,” he promises, before Steve physically pushes him toward the door.

Bucky calls Claire Temple and Teddy on his way, literally running the ten blocks between his apartment and the center. Thankfully, when he comes to a stop, breathing heavily, in front of the center’s front steps, Billy is still sitting there. Shaking like a leaf, his arms wrapped protectively around himself, but _there_.

“Hey,” Bucky says in a low voice as he drops down next to Billy, reaching out to feel his head. “Hey, I’m here.”

In an unprecedented action, Billy turns into Bucky, and falls into his arms, letting himself be held like a much younger child. Bucky allows it, holding tightly to him, and letting out little soothing noises into Billy’s hair.

“I’m so proud of you, Billy,” Bucky murmurs as Billy’s muscles spasm in his arms. “You did the right thing, reaching out. You’re so strong, you can do this. Calling me was the right thing to do, okay? Think you can make it inside?”

Billy nods into Bucky’s chest, so Bucky helps him to his feet, and wraps an arm around his narrow shoulders, supporting him up the rest of the stairs to the door. He unlocks it quickly so they can both duck inside, out of the chill of this October night.

Bucky sits Billy down on one of the plush chairs they have in the living-room-like youth rec room. The center has this room available for teenagers to come hang out, or decompress, or even sleep, any time the center is open. He pulls a couple of water bottles out of the fridge, handing one of them to Billy right away with the order to drink it. He’s got Billy calmed down a little by the time Teddy bursts into the center.

“Billy!” Teddy cries out, and Bucky calls back to him, “Back here, Ted.”

A moment later, Teddy is rushing into the rec room, diving straight for Billy, and landing on the floor in front of Billy’s knees, with his big arms circling Billy’s small waist, and his head in Billy’s lap.

Billy is crying again, but not quite so frantically this time, and he keeps apologizing to Teddy again and again, but Teddy pushes up and kisses him soundly, stopping his _I’m sorry_ s cold.

“I _love_ you,” Teddy tells Billy firmly, leaning their foreheads together. “I’ve _got_ you. No matter _what_ , you understand?”

Billy nods, but doesn’t speak.

“I’m not mad,” Teddy adds, stroking Billy’s cheek with his thumb. “I just want you to know you can tell me anything, okay? I’ve got you.”

Billy nods again. “Okay,” he whispers, and Teddy kisses him again.

Having stepped off to the side to give them a little room, Bucky looks around. “Ted, where are your parents?” he asks.

“My mom’s outside,” Teddy says, sniffing. “She gave me a ride when I told her Billy needed me.”

“Did you tell her—?” Billy begins, but Teddy is already shaking his head, squeezing Billy’s hands.

“No, but I wouldn’t be surprised if she guessed anyway.”

When Bucky glances over at Billy, Billy is already watching him, already knows what he’s about to say.

“I can’t,” Billy says preemptively, just as Bucky says, “You need to call your parents, Bill.”

Bucky frowns. “You’ve gotta tell them where you are,” he insists. “I’m sure they want to know.”

Billy’s shaking his head fervently, though. “I can’t,” he insists, “they’ll be so disappointed.”

“Baby, no, they won’t,” Teddy says soothingly, reaching up with one hand to cradle Billy’s face in his palm. “They love you so much, and they know what you’re going through. They only want to help you.”

The front door opens again, presumably as Claire Temple arrives. Billy and Teddy keep murmuring softly to each other as Bucky goes to greet her.

“Thanks for coming, Claire,” he says, leading her back into the rec room.

“Hey,” Claire replies, “you tell me you got a suffering kid, I’m not exactly going to say no, am I?”

Bucky stops her at the doorway, giving Billy and Teddy a moment to finish their conversation without the adults eavesdropping. “I appreciate it all the same,” he insists. “I know this puts you in an ethically-grey situation.”

“Ethically, maybe,” Claire agrees, “not morally. I help who needs me. You said he’s worried he’ll be taken to a different foster home?”

Bucky nods. “He’s finally got a good thing going, and he’s got extenuating circumstances which could cause an unwanted switch like that to be potentially emotionally debilitating.”

“Got it,” Claire says, nodding. She watches Billy for a moment before asking, “How old is he?”

“Sixteen,” Bucky answers.

“Sixteen,” Claire repeats softly, shaking her head. “I’ll never get used to how young they are.”

Bucky doesn’t tell her how young _he_ was the first time he went into heroin withdrawals. He doesn’t mention how the drug had been injected into his veins without his consent time after time after time, so when they first stopped giving it to him entirely all of a sudden, he thought for over a week that he was, surely, dying.

This isn’t about Bucky, though, all of that is irrelevant.

So he doesn’t say anything at all.

“Well,” Claire is saying now, “I can give him what will essentially be outpatient treatment. I’ll go to his house to treat him medically, but he’s going to need to see you, too.”

“Of course,” Bucky responds. “Whatever I can do.”

“And it’s ultimately up to his foster parents whether or not they want to actually report this,” Claire points out.

Bucky nods, watching Teddy hold Billy’s hand as Billy calls his parents. Claire crosses into the room to set up an IV of fluids for Billy, as well as whatever else she’s going to give him tonight, and Bucky just wishes, with every fiber of his being, that he could do more.

By the time the dust settles, Billy’s hydration pack is empty, and his parents have arrived and piled him with love and hugs, then spoken to him, to Teddy, to Bucky, to Claire, to Billy again, and to Bucky again, an agreement is reached, and a plan is set, and the clock ticks past three in the morning.

Claire takes her kit, and Teddy goes home with Billy and his parents, his mom long since having left him with her blessing to spend the night with his boyfriend, and Bucky, for some reason, declines all offers of a ride home, insisting that ten blocks is nothing, and he walks it all the time, and he’ll be fine. Until he’s bone-weary, stumbling home all alone in the middle of the night.

He barely manages to climb the stairs in his building, just to open his door to a dark, empty apartment.

Bucky absolutely does not blame Steve for going home. He was gone for _hours_ , and it must be weird to hang around on your own in the home of a man you literally _just_ entered into an official relationship with. But watching a teenager he loves going through heroin withdrawal, surrounded by people who support him, has made Bucky think a lot about _being_ a teenager going through heroin withdrawal, starkly alone, which has just managed to remind him sharply that Steve doesn’t yet know about that lifetime he lived so long ago. And maybe Steve wouldn’t want to be in a relationship with Bucky at all if he knew. And someday very soon, Bucky is going to have to tell him.

But that...well, that thought is going to have to wait until at least the morning, because right now, Bucky is inexpressibly exhausted, both physically and emotionally, and tonight, for the first time in quite some time, he’s feeling deeply and terribly lonely.

He stumbles into his bedroom, shedding his clothes haphazardly as he goes, and reaches for the light switch, fully expecting to drop into a cold and empty bed and try to fall asleep as quickly as he can. But then the light switches on. And he sees what — or rather, _who_ — is in his bed.

Steve. Still here, tucked into Bucky’s bed, smiling softly in his sleep.

Bucky’s eyes well with tears at the sight, and he thinks he can feel his heart physically swell. All at once, the cold loneliness is just _gone_ , replaced in full by the most overwhelming warmth Bucky has ever felt towards another person.

_Steve._

Bucky stumbles toward the bed, falling into it on accident when he gets there, and Steve blinks blearily awake, turning bright blue eyes up to Bucky, with an already half-formed smile on his face, as his hands reach out to pull Bucky into his radiating light.

Steve’s eyebrows furrow a little when he sees the tears in Bucky’s eyes, starting to spill over onto his cheeks, but Bucky just falls into the softness of Steve’s body, burying his face in Steve’s neck, and all of the tension drains out of him when Steve’s strong arms encircle him and hold him tightly. He feels protected. He feels _loved_.

Steve squeezes Bucky, holding the back of his head with one hand, and quietly allows Bucky to just breathe, and cry, and Bucky can’t remember the last time someone loved him this way. He suspects, in this moment, with his face pressed into Steve’s strong shoulder, and Steve’s fingers softly scratching his head through his hair, that Steve may not have to wait that long for Bucky to _know_ after all.

After a while, when Bucky’s breathing has evened out and slowed, and tears are no longer dotting onto his eyelashes, Steve pulls back, but only just enough to examine Bucky’s face, and to brush away the hair stuck to his forehead and cheek by tears and sweat.

“Hey,” Steve whispers, the first word either has spoken since Bucky got home. “Are you okay, honey?”

Bucky sniffs and nods, wiping his nose with the back of his hand while Steve pushes another lock of hair out of his face. “I’m okay,” he says, trying to sound reassuring. “Everyone’s okay.”

Steve’s brow is still deeply furrowed in concern, his eyes bright with it. “What happened?” he asks softly.

“One of my patients went into crisis,” Bucky explains simply. He can’t legally tell Steve much about what happened, has to keep the details out. “He’s safe, he’s not currently in danger anymore, but it was...draining.” Steve doesn’t — can’t — know, yet, why this was so personal for Bucky.

“I can’t imagine,” Steve breathes, still cradling Bucky’s face in his hands. He leans forward and kisses one tear-streaked cheek, then the other. Bucky’s eyes close at the relief.

But then Steve sits back a little, letting his hands slide gently down Bucky’s arms to tuck them into Bucky’s hands, and sighs. “I’m sorry,” he says sincerely. “I love you very much. Do you want me to go?”

Bucky startles at the question, but Steve keeps talking.

“I don’t want to be in the way if you need some space to decompress.”

Oh. Well. That’s actually incredibly thoughtful. But.

Bucky squeezes Steve’s hands in his, and leans forward. And Steve leans in to meet him, until their foreheads touch.

“That is,” Bucky insists slowly into the inches between them, “the very _last_ thing, in the whole entire universe, that I want.”

It’s very late, and Bucky is very worn out, so they quickly end up lying down together to sleep. But Steve cuddles up behind Bucky, spooning him so thoroughly that Bucky feels almost cocooned in his big arms. And then Steve falls asleep very quickly, his deep, even breaths in Bucky’s ear a solid and comforting white noise, strong and warm enough that it pulls Bucky into sleep as well.

And then in the morning, when daylight creeps in to their quiet sanctuary together, Steve is still there. It’s something so simple, so easy, but it feels like a miracle to Bucky as his eyes flutter open at the press of Steve’s lips against his cheek.

“Morning, sweetheart,” Steve murmurs into his ear, and Bucky turns his head to smile sleepily up at him — at his _boyfriend_ , slightly blurry though he may be with Bucky’s contacts out and his glasses still on his nightstand, the best person in the entire world.

“Hi, baby,” Bucky replies, his voice low and groggy. He rolls onto his back as Steve shifts to lean over him, ducking down to press their lips together. “ _Damn_ it’s nice to see you first thing in the morning.”

Steve grins. “Same here,” he purrs, brushing his fingers over Bucky’s face. “Are you aware of how beautiful you are?”

Bucky snorts. “You keep telling me,” he says.

“And I will continue to do so,” Steve promises. He glances over Bucky’s face, and then asks, “You doing okay?”

“Yeah, Stevie,” Bucky says softly, reaching up and brushing the bridge of Steve’s nose, which Steve wrinkles adorably. “I’m fine.”

He thinks, for a moment, about transitioning them into a Talk. Finally telling Steve about the things that were done to him when he was younger. The things he did.

But — and he knows this makes him an absolute fucking coward — this moment, as Steve smiles down at him, and leans down to kiss Bucky with more tenderness than Bucky has ever experienced before this man in bed with him entered his life, is too precious. Too important.

He just can’t bear to ruin it.

🎈

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **Next time:**   
> 


	6. Six: October 5th

“Wow, _finally!_ ”

Steve snorts into his drink, ducking when it splashes into his face.

Sam hands him a napkin to dab with, grinning. “No, really, man,” he continues as Steve cleans himself up, “I’m happy for you. I know how much you like this guy.”

“He _loooves_ this guy,” Nat corrects, sing-song, and Steve levels a glare at her. “What?” she asks in response. “You do!”

“Is that what he said?” Sam asks her before Steve can open his mouth to get a word in. “Steven, I can’t believe you told Nat you’re in love before you told me! I’m your best friend, I’m _insulted!_ ”

“Hey!” Steve snaps, raising his voice a little, but the laugh that slips out completely undermines his authority.

Nat and Sam turn to him over the table of the restaurant where they’ve all come out to eat after work on Monday evening. They’ve been seated at a table on the patio, which is lovely, as the last remnants of sunshine fade out into the twilight through the city.

“Sam,” Steve sighs, because sometimes talking to these two is like talking to two difficult children, “I was _about_ to tell you, I hadn’t _gotten_ to it yet, after just having told you he agreed to be my boyfriend.”

“Your _boooyfrieeend_ ,” Nat carols, enjoying this way too much.

Sam pouts. “But you already told Nat!” he protests.

“Because Nat and I work like four inches from each other!” Steve groans, exasperated, but fond. “I went straight to work from his place this morning. You went to work early today, so you wouldn’t have been home even if I _did_ go home! _And_ she’s _also_ my best friend!”

“Still,” Sam grumps. But then he smiles, giving away what they’ve all known the whole time: that the pouting has all been for show. “So you love him?”

Steve blushes, dropping his gaze as he feels himself melt into what is surely an inexpressibly dopey grin. “Yeah,” he breathes. “Yeah, I do, I love him. He’s just...perfect.”

When Steve looks up, both Sam and Nat are watching him with genuine happiness and pride shining in their eyes. They may be two absolute shits, but they love him.

Steve loves them back.

“ _Best. Behavior,_ ” Steve emphasizes for the fifth time as Sam rolls his eyes as dramatically as possible.

“I will _be_ on my best behavior,” Sam insists for the fifth time, and he’s honestly being incredibly patient, which is infuriating. He can clearly tell that Steve is anxious about his longtime best friend meeting the man he’s in love with, who also happens to be his brand new boyfriend.

Unfortunately — or maybe fortunately, Steve can’t tell — there’s a knock on the door right then, before Steve can fret any more than he already has.

“Go get the door, Cap,” Sam tells him gently, with just a _hint_ of judgement in his voice, and Steve is so anxious he just obeys.

Which ends up being a wonderful decision, because when he opens the door to his smiling boyfriend, Bucky stretches forward to kiss him immediately.

“Hey, tiger,” Buck greets him quietly. “Your roommate here, or do we have time to fool around first?”

Steve invited Bucky over tonight specifically to meet Sam — and would have had Nat over, too, if she didn’t have a deadline to meet tomorrow that’s forced her to go back to the office to finish her piece — but all of a sudden, he’s considering forgoing that idea altogether, and just sweeping Bucky into his bedroom. Not that he won’t have a chance to do that after Sam leaves, but _still._

Instead, begrudgingly, as Steve steps back to let Bucky in, he gestures toward Sam, who’s now leaning on the back of the sofa.

“Buck,” he introduces, “this is my best friend, Sam Wilson. Sam, this is Bucky Barnes, my wonderful boyfriend.”

Bucky rolls his eyes, and his cheeks flush as he reaches out to shake Sam’s hand. “Hi, Sam, it’s good to officially meet you.”

“You too, Bucky,” Sam answers, grinning. “I hear you’re a wonderful boyfriend.”

“Ugh, _god_ ,” Bucky groans, embarrassed, which is fucking _adorable_ , and Steve watches him, in utter awe of who he is.

“What do you mean, ‘officially’?” Sam asks. “Did we _un_ officially meet at some point?”

Now Steve can feel his own face go red, and he coughs a little. “Uh, yeah,” he begins. “‘Boutta month ago, Bucky was over when you came home, you remember?”

Sam frowns, squinting at Steve as he searches his brain. “No, not at all,” he answers eventually.

Thank _god_.

“Was I acting in a way which would humiliate me if you described it to me?” Sam asks Bucky.

“Uh—”

“Yes,” Steve answers quickly, eyes flashing to Bucky, who suppresses a smile toward him. He has no intention of describing to Sam the state in which he and Bucky were when he burst through the door.

“Okay,” Sam says decisively, “then we will never speak of it. Unless you want to schedule a session, Steve, because I’m guessing it wasn’t peaches and cream for you, either, based on that look on your face.”

Steve glowers at him.

“A session?” Bucky asks politely, drawing the conversation out of the loving ribbing it’s devolved into.

“Yeah,” Steve answers, grateful to him, “Sam’s a counselor at the VA.”

“No way!” Bucky says, eyes lighting up as he turns to Sam. “You serve, too?”

Sam grins and nods, crossing his arms over his chest. “Air Force.”

“Officer?”

“NCO,” Sam says. “Staff sergeant.”

Bucky grins, clearly delighted to meet someone who has so much in common with him. “Good to meet you, Sarge,” he says sincerely.

“Likewise, Sergeant Barnes,” Sam answers.

“Steve told you?”

“Yeah, said you’re a therapist, too?”

“That I am,” Bucky replies. “You got any open groups?”

“A couple,” Sam confirms, and Steve is officially not involved in this conversation anymore, which makes him indescribably happy. “Steve pops in and out when he feels like it. You looking to join one?”

“Maybe,” Bucky admits. “It’s been a long time since I served, but you know with this,” he indicates his prosthetic arm by raising it a little, “sometimes shit comes up that I think I’m done with. Are there any amputees in your groups?”

Sam nods. “‘Course there are.”

“Queer people?”

“That too,” Sam laughs, pushing up off the back of the sofa. “Tell you what, I’m stepping out for my evening group just now, but if you’re serious, have Steve give you my number, and text me, I’ll send you some times. No pressure.” He pauses. “Although you’re a PhD, right? You probably know more than me.”

“Bullshit,” Bucky says firmly. “Show me what you got first, _then_ I can judge you.”

“Oh, it’s like that?” Sam laughs. “All right, you’re on, Barnes.”

“I’m taking you up on this, Wilson,” Bucky warns.

“You’re more than welcome to,” Sam tells him.

“Okay,” Steve cuts in, reaching out to pull Bucky toward him possessively, “stop flirting with my boyfriend, Sam.”

Sam cracks up as Bucky grins at Steve, and presses a sweet, chaste kiss to his cheek.

“You know _you_ have nothing to worry about, Superman,” Sam tells him.

“Hey, you’re very hot!” Steve protests while Bucky leans into his chest, and his own arm automatically circles around Bucky’s shoulders.

“Steve,” Bucky murmurs, pressing a kiss to Steve’s neck, “you have _nothing_ to worry about.”

And that—well, that warms Steve from the inside out. He has no reply but to wrap his other arm around Bucky, too, and squeeze.

Sam winks at him over Bucky’s head, and grabs his coat to head out to his group. “Genuinely good to meet you, Barnes,” he says as Bucky turns to him. “I like this one, Steve. See you both later.”

“Bye, Sam,” Bucky says, giggling as he lets Steve hold him around the waist, leaning back into Steve’s chest. “It was good to meet you, too.”

After Sam has left, Bucky spins back around in Steve’s arms.

“Sam likes me,” he says, pleased, and Steve smiles as he kisses him.

“He has good taste.”

“I like Sam.”

“I’m glad.”

“Has Sam liked all of your partners?” Bucky asks coyly, playing with the collar of Steve’s shirt, and Steve laughs.

“Are you asking about my previous relationships without _asking_ about my previous relationships?” he asks.

Bucky narrows his eyes, but he’s still smiling. “Maybe,” he admits. When Steve laughs again, he adds, “We just haven’t ever talked about it before, and the way he said, ‘this one’ makes me curious.”

“Okay, sit,” Steve tells him, nodding toward the couch and releasing him. “You want something to drink while we do this?”

“ _Do_ this?” Bucky asks as Steve goes for the refrigerator. “How long is this conversation going to be?”

Steve chuckles. “Not long, I’m just making sure you’re comfortable.”

“Ah,” Bucky says. “Water, then, thank you.”

Steve grabs two glasses from the cabinet, and fills them at the filter, then brings them back to the sofa. “You’re an easy man to please,” he says, handing a glass to Bucky.

“Only by you,” Bucky tells him, smiling at him, and it’s a line, but Steve melts.

“Okay,” Steve says, getting comfy on the couch. “Since you asked first: I had a longtime girlfriend in my twenties. We met in college, dated for our senior year, and then moved in together after we graduated, lived together when I wasn’t deployed overseas. We were together for another, what? Six years? I left the military, joined the police force, quit the police force, and started at the paper all while we were together. I was ready to propose to her when we were twenty-eight, but she broke up with me when she found the ring. We loved each other a lot, but we were going in different directions, and she was smarter than me, knew we were going to hold each other back if we stayed together. She was right, too.”

“Where is she now?” Bucky asks softly.

Steve winces. “She passed away,” he answers. “About four years ago.”

“Oh, god,” Bucky breathes, reaching out to hold Steve’s hand. “I’m so sorry, Steve.”

Steve shrugs. “I miss her. She was my best friend, even after we broke up. She was an amazing person, and a very important one in my life for nine years. Her name was Margaret—Peggy, everyone called her.”

Bucky gives him a sad smile. “I can’t imagine losing someone so important to me like that.”

“Yeah,” Steve agrees. “When we broke up, it was rough, but I trusted that it was the right thing to do because I trusted her. When she passed, it was…dark. I was not in a good place, and I made some decisions that I otherwise would never have even contemplated. That’s when Sam moved in with me, which ended up being literally life saving. He claimed he needed a roommate, but I know that was his goal all along — he brought it up, and then moved right in almost as soon as I got out of the hospital. This is all very heavy, are you okay?”

“I’m fine, honey,” Bucky assures him. “I appreciate you telling me all of this, really. And I’m glad you’re in a better place now. Right?”

“Definitely,” Steve emphasizes, squeezing Bucky’s hand. “ _Much_ better place. I think it’s only fair you know all this, though. Before Peggy, I didn’t have anything serious. I was kind of a late bloomer.”

“Really?” Bucky chuckles. “I can’t picture that.”

“Well, picture a very skinny, very sickly kid,” Steve tells him, grinning as he leans his head against the back of the couch. “I didn’t get beefy until I was like twenty-one.”

Bucky just cackles, which Steve loves.

“After Peggy and I broke up,” he continues, “I very briefly dated a woman who turned out to be Peggy’s cousin, which quickly killed _that_ relationship. And a year or so ago, I had a _very_ short-lived affair with Tony Stark—”

“Wait, _what?!_ ” Bucky sputters. “ _The_ Tony Stark?”

“Yup,” Steve confirms. “We’ve been friends for a while, and it was this, like...sexual tension thing.” He rolls his eyes. “Didn’t last more than a week or two, but it was...a whirlwind.”

“Is that shorthand for you had a lot of sex in a short amount of time?”

“Yes, that is what that means.”

Bucky snorts. “Wait—haven’t I insulted Tony Stark in front of you, like, a _number_ of times?”

“Yes,” Steve confirms, grinning. “It’s been _hilarious_.”

Bucky rolls his eyes, and tips his head back. “Christ,” he mutters, pinching the bridge of his nose, but he’s laughing softly.

“And that’s about it,” Steve finishes, “aside from a handful one-night stands. Do you want to know about those?”

“No, I’m good,” Bucky tells him fondly. “I trust you, I figure you’ve told me all the relevant stuff anyway.”

Steve grins. “Oh!” he suddenly gasps, remembering. “Then you probably _should_ know that one of those one-night things was with Sam.”

“Really?” Bucky doesn’t look at all jealous or upset to hear that his new boyfriend is best friends and roommates with a man he once slept with. Actually, he looks _impressed_.

Steve nods. “After Peggy and I broke up, but before Sam and I moved in together,” he clarifies. “It was the first night we met. Turns out we’re not romantically compatible.”

“Good to know,” Bucky laughs. “And lucky for me. But you still haven’t answered my question.”

“What question?”

“Has Sam liked all of your partners?”

Steve laughs. “Definitely not. He never got to meet Peg, but I know he would have loved her. He very briefly met Sharon — Peggy’s cousin — and liked her as a person, but didn’t like her for me, even before I realized she was related to my ex. He still teases me about that whole situation _to this day_. And he kind of hates Tony, actually. I don’t think he’s liked a single person I’ve casually hooked up with, either, come to think of it.”

Bucky grins. “You’re full of surprises, Rogers, you know that?”

“Am I?” Steve asks, and Bucky nods. “Good ones, I hope.”

Bucky makes an ‘ _eh’_ face, and shrugs one shoulder, but then he smiles again.

“So far,” he murmurs, eyes so warm and tender, and Steve melts all over again.

“Okay,” Steve says after a minute, clearing his throat, which feels oddly thick all of a sudden. “Your turn.”

“Hm,” Bucky hums, taking a drink of water. “Well, my list is shorter.”

“Fair enough.”

Bucky settles back against the corner of the sofa. “Past ten years, I’ve had absolutely nothing serious,” he confesses. “I told you when we met that I’ve had a bad track record.”

“I remember,” Steve mumbles, brushing a curl off of Bucky’s forehead. Bucky smiles softly, and closes his eyes at the touch, and Steve leaves his hand cradled against Bucky’s head.

“Well, a lot of that was because I was sleeping with people who are not good people,” Bucky continues when he opens his eyes again. “I’m sure I could psychoanalyze myself, and talk all about how I seek out the wrong people, who I _know_ wouldn’t be good long-term partners, and then _immediately_ have sex with them for attention and the illusion of affection, and then when it all goes to hell shortly thereafter, I’m not emotionally involved enough for the rejection to be devastating, but just enough for it to sting like hell, and reinforce my idea that I am ultimately unloveable, even though my logical brain knows that isn’t true—but why would I bore either of us with that?”

Steve huffs a little laugh, but he knows he is absolutely not succeeding at keeping his concern off his face.

“Do you really do that?” he asks softly, rubbing his thumb softly over the place on Bucky’s forehead where that pretty curl was a moment ago.

“Rinse and repeat,” Bucky says, nodding very slightly so as not to knock Steve’s hand off his head. “You’re entirely different, pal. You’re the wrench in my wheel to disrupt that unhealthy, self-destructive cycle I’ve been perpetuating.”

Steve smirks. “I will _happily_ wrench your wheel,” he tells Bucky sincerely, pulling his hand through Bucky’s curls, and then letting it fall. Bucky grins at him.

And then he wets his lips nervously, and says, “I did, however, have, um….” He pauses, looking down at his fidgeting hands as he hesitates. “I had a…bad relationship when I was younger. Very abusive. I don’t like rehashing it, but I was in a really dangerous situation with a terrible person, and I didn’t have the option to leave for a long time.”

“Woah,” Steve breathes, reaching out to take Bucky’s hand again, stopping his nervous hand-wringing, “that sounds awful, honey.”

“It wasn’t good, that’s for sure,” Bucky says darkly, eyes still downcast, but looking at Steve’s hand in his this time. “It was a long time ago. It’s not…something I’ve told anyone. Aside from my old therapist.”

Steve squeezes Bucky’s hand again. “Thank you for telling me,” he says quietly. “I hate that something like that…happened to you.”

Bucky glances up at him, and makes a face — thoughtful, a little wry. Steve doesn’t know what it means, but he doesn’t get the impression that Bucky wants to tell him right now. And if Bucky doesn’t want to tell him, he’s not going to push it. Steve resolves, right now, never to push Bucky into _anything_. Ever.

“Well,” Bucky continues, “aside from that, I did have one pretty serious thing.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah. It, um. It overlapped with the other one a little,” he admits, looking guilty.

“I don’t know that it counts as cheating if you’re being forced into the original relationship,” Steve tells him, bristling internally at the thought that Bucky feels guilty about not being totally faithful to someone who was _abusing him_.

Bucky raises an eyebrow in a sort of ‘ _I guess’_ expression. “Well, she was my saving grace, so I absolutely get how you feel about Peggy. She ended up helping me out of that dangerous situation with the other person, and we were very in love for a long time. We were young, though, and fucked up, and we didn’t know how to be together, so we were desperately codependent, and we fought a lot, and then we were spectacularly _done_ , and then I joined the army.”

“Wow.”

“Yeah, it was a whole thing,” Bucky says, smiling in that way that Steve has come to recognize as the smile he gives to hide his actual feelings. “But like I said, we were young. It was years ago, and I actually haven’t heard from her since.” He pauses a minute, thoughtful. “I miss her a lot sometimes.”

“I get that,” Steve says. He hesitates, not wanting to push. But they’re _in_ this, the two of them, they’ve decided. They’ve committed. So he decides, ultimately, to say, “You know if you ever want to share more about that bad situation with me, I’d be honored to listen. No pressure, but don’t feel like you can’t.”

Bucky smiles again, a little sad this time, and leans forward toward Steve. “Someday,” he promises, “I will.” He pauses, and then his smile grows, and finally reaches his eyes again. “I’m really fucking happy that I’m with you now, Stevie.”

Steve meets him halfway, and kisses him hard.

It’s the kind of kiss that starts out with purely innocent intentions — just a press of lips, albeit a firm one — and quickly turns filthy. Steve’s hands come up to cradle Bucky’s face as his tongue reaches deep into Bucky’s mouth, pressing into this kiss insistently, so that he would probably be pushing Bucky back onto the arm of the sofa if Bucky weren’t pressing into him just as hard, reaching his arms around Steve’s waist to bring him in even closer.

Steve’s hands wander from Bucky’s face, down his throat, across his chest and stomach, down to the hem of his shirt, which he tugs on in a question. Bucky answers by lifting his arms so Steve can pull the damn shirt up and over his head, casting it on the floor as though it offended him. It _has_ offended him. Covering up such abject beauty like this. Should be a crime.

As Steve begins to skate his hands all over Bucky’s beautiful bare torso, and ducks his head to press hot, wet kisses down this gorgeous man’s neck and over his chest, Bucky starts to undo Steve’s shirt, button by button. He’s adorably stymied, a little, by the way Steve has now moved on to his jeans, making quick work of his fly, and pushing at the waistband until Bucky finally relinquishes Steve’s buttons, and shifts enough that Steve can yank his jeans all the way off.

“ _Christ_ ,” Steve growls into Bucky’s mouth, hands _everywhere_ , because how can he not? Bucky shivers under his touch, which Steve… _really_ likes. “Jesus, Buck, you’re just so— I mean, I can’t _stand_ —” He can hear his inability to finish a sentence, but nothing he can think to say is _enough_ for this perfect man.

Bucky’s laugh is light and lilting, and far too breathless to be at all casual, as he finally lets himself be pushed back into the couch, Steve on top of him, between his legs. “You’re real articulate today, pal,” he teases.

“I got _so close_ last night,” Steve babbles, trying desperately to express how he feels while his dick is insisting so firmly on doing all the thinking right now, causing him to distractedly rock against Bucky’s body.

Bucky makes an adorably confused face up at him between the kisses Steve keeps giving him, again and again. “So close to what?”

Steve blushes. He can feel the heat in his face, but he tries valiantly to ignore it as he laments, “To finally seeing you naked.”

Bucky’s eyebrows shoot up to his hairline, and a spark lights in his wide, dark eyes, but Steve keeps talking because he can’t stop himself.

“I’ve been _so_ happy to wait as long as you need, I hope you know that. And I would never, _ever_ pressure you. But _fucking Christ_ , Buck, you are the hottest thing I have ever seen in my whole entire life, and I have been _dreaming_ about what you look like under all those pretty things you wear since the moment I first laid eyes on you.”

Bucky lets out a rush of breath, his eyes visibly dilating. He pushes up to kiss Steve again — full of intention and promise — before slipping out from under him, and standing up.

For a moment, Steve reaches out after Bucky as he flops down onto the sofa alone, not a single coherent thought in his mind beyond, ‘ _Bucky gone: bad, Bucky here: good.’_ But then, all at once, he stops completely short.

And that’s because Bucky has stepped a few feet away from him, turned back to face Steve with a flush across his cheeks and a determined expression on his face, and then, in one fluid motion, slipped completely out of his boxer briefs, revealing his erect and _exceptionally_ pretty cock.

Thick and flushed, it curves gracefully downward. It looks long from here — long enough to _really_ feel it ramming into you. Long enough to choke on it, if you wanted to. And Steve _definitely_ wants to. It’s pink, and it’s hard, and it’s _dripping_ , and Steve has never wanted anything more in his whole damn life.

Aside, maybe, from just _Bucky_ in general.

As Bucky stands there, looking like he was carved from marble by gods who were all deeply horny for him, Steve just stares at him, mouth slightly agape, trying hard not to actually drool. He wants his mouth on that. _Bad_.

The corner of Bucky’s mouth pulls up into a crooked smirk, but there’s a small, secret nervousness in his eyes that Steve already knows well enough to spot.

“So?” Bucky asks, and his voice is mostly steady. “Everything you dreamed of?”

But there isn’t an _answer_ to that. There aren’t the words to properly say to him how much Steve has never even dared to dream of someone like Bucky. How he has never, not once, allowed himself the indulgence of imagining up a person so good, so _perfect_ in his own, fucked up way, let alone that that person could actually want _Steve_ the way that Steve wants _him_.

It’s overwhelming. It’s ineffable.

So, with words utterly failing him in every way, Steve doesn’t speak. Instead, he pushes himself up, off the sofa, and crosses to Bucky, reaching for him, until his hands are on Bucky’s body, and his mouth is on Bucky’s mouth.

Bucky clings to Steve as they passionately kiss, and Steve can feel the goosebumps rising all over Bucky’s bare skin as he runs his hands _everywhere_ , feeling every inch of Bucky’s body he can reach.

It’s not lost on either of them that Steve is still, for all intents and purposes, fully dressed. Bucky’s fingers keep curling in his shirt, and into the pockets of his jeans to pull his pelvis closer, but he’s no longer making any effort whatsoever to remove them from Steve’s body. Steve _likes_ that. Likes the feeling of Bucky vulnerably giving himself to him in an act of trust that clearly turns them _both_ on. Bucky gasps at every brush of Steve’s jeans against his cock, and Steve wants to _do_ this. Wants to give Bucky everything he needs — everything he _wants._ To carefully undo this perfect man, and draw from him every little noise, every gasp, every moan that Bucky is capable of making, and then to have the immense honor of putting him back together again.

And so, with that in mind, Steve reaches between them, kissing deeply into Bucky’s mouth as he does, and crosses the line they’ve been edging together since the hour they met.

Bucky lets out something guttural when Steve’s hand finally wraps around his cock. It’s been _months_ of anticipation leading up to this moment, and as Steve holds him close, and starts to stroke him just a little, Bucky thinks that it’s been _so_ worth it. Just this, just Steve’s _hand_ on him, is so electric, that Bucky could legitimately come from just the small friction Steve is giving him right now.

Plus, the feel of Steve’s clothes against Bucky’s nakedness, the subtle power dynamic of it, is inexplicably thrilling. Bucky realizes that he’s never actually trusted someone like this. He trusts Steve implicitly. He just _does_ , and it’s so easy, that he’s never even thought about it. He just… _trusts_.

It’s something he’s wanted his entire life, something he was robbed of so early into his young adulthood, that he wasn’t sure he’d ever get it back. But here, with this man, it just is. As if it could ever be that easy. It just _is_.

Steve’s hand around him tightens a little, speeding up the rhythm of his strokes, and Bucky moans breathlessly into Steve’s smiling lips. He’s already starting to lose it, but then Steve kisses his neck, and then his shoulder, and his collarbone, and then _drops to his knees_ in front of Bucky, and presses kisses against Bucky’s _hip_ , and his shockingly blue eyes look up into Bucky’s as he opens his mouth—

And then Bucky’s _fucking phone_ starts to ring on the coffee table.

Steve glances over his shoulder at it, then looks back up at Bucky. His hand hasn’t stopped moving over Bucky, but his mouth is closed. It’s all very distracting.

“Do you need to get that?” Steve asks him. It takes a second for Bucky to register it.

_No,_ he thinks petulantly, even though the only reason it’s ringing audibly at all is because the person who’s calling is the only one in Bucky’s phone besides Steve who’s currently set to Emergency Bypass. He doesn’t have many boundaries with his kids when it comes to his personal time, but after last night, Bucky made a conscious decision to put his phone on Do Not Disturb tonight. He had _plans_.

He sighs. More of a huff, really.

“That’s RJ,” he says reluctantly, carding his fingers into Steve’s hair with a kind of pathetic desperation. “Just…ignore it,” he continues, fooling no one, “it’ll be fine. I’ll call him back.”

Steve gives him a Look, and his hand stops moving. “RJ is Gen Z,” he points out, “I’m guessing he doesn’t actually _call_ you unless it’s pretty urgent, right?”

_Godfuckingdamnit_ why is this man so _right_ all the _time_ about _everything?!_

Bucky groans loudly in childish protest, but then says, “Fine, okay, Jesus,” before he scoops his underwear off the floor, and hops around getting back into it as he snatches up his phone, and goes into the kitchen to answer it in a soft voice.

Steve doesn’t eavesdrop. He blocks out the sound of Bucky talking quietly on the phone just a few feet away, and instead busies himself with locating and picking up all of Bucky’s clothes, which Steve tossed unceremoniously around the room. They’ve been interrupted enough times now for him not to feel overly optimistic about being able to pick up where they left off when the call is over.

And sure enough, after Bucky says, “Okay. I love you. I’ll see you soon,” and hangs up, he lowers his phone with one hand, and quietly pinches the bridge of his nose with the other, light glinting off the metal of his fingers.

Steve watches him do this, swelling with love for him. He’s so fucking cute all the fucking time. It’s unbearable.

“So,” Bucky begins with a huge sigh.

“You have to go,” Steve finishes for him.

Bucky makes a ridiculously adorable, scrunchy, grumpy face at Steve, and nods.

“I want you to know,” he says earnestly, “you are _very_ high on my priority list, and I mean that. It’s just that—”

“RJ’s number one, right?” Steve asks, and Bucky nods again, sadly. “That’s all right,” Steve tells him honestly. “That’s how it should be.”

“I’m sorry—”

“Don’t you fucking dare,” Steve cuts Bucky off mid-apology, crossing into the kitchen to pull him into a tight hug. Bucky hugs him back just as tightly, perfect, mismatched hands fisting in the back of Steve’s shirt, bare skin soft and warm in his arms. “You don’t ever need to apologize to me for something like this, okay? Not ever.”

Bucky tucks his face into Steve’s neck, and nods. His voice is so small when he speaks.

“Okay.”

“I’m so _jealous!_ ” Natasha bursts out, interrupting Sam’s fifth sing-songy chorus of ‘ _I got to meet him fiiirst, Steve likes me beeetter_.’

“Hah!” Sam cries in triumph at Nat’s admission. “I knew it!”

Steve snorts, handing Nat the beer he went to get her as he sits back down on the sofa next to her. If Bucky can’t be here — or rather, just down the hall, naked, and in bed with Steve — having his two very best friends with him is a decent consolation prize.

“For what it’s worth,” Steve tells Nat in a low voice, as Sam continues his victory dance in front of the television, “I don’t like Sam better than you.”

Sam’s dance stops abruptly. He gapes at Steve, utterly betrayed.

But Nat just primly crosses her legs, and smiles smugly at Sam while he drops, disheartened, into the armchair.

“I wanna meet him, though,” she then says, mood shifting quickly as she glares at Steve over her beer. “Soon.”

“You will,” Steve assures her. He can’t help the smile that stretches across his face at the thought. “We’re pretty solidly _in_ at this point, you _will_ be meeting him soon.”

Nat cocks an eyebrow at him, grinning in that feline way that scares him. “ _Before_ the wedding, preferably,” she adds, and Steve’s entire face goes red.

“He’s really hot,” Sam tells Nat excitedly, apparently tired of pretending to be petulant, and being ignored. “Like, _insanely_ hot. Like, ‘how the _fuck_ did Rogers bag that? _’_ hot.”

“Really?” Nat coos, intrigued, as Steve tries not to turn the color of a whole-ass tomato. “Pics?”

“Steve didn’t show you his Insta already?” Sam asks incredulously. “I saw that thing like twelve times the first _week_ they were dating.”

“Fury doesn’t like when we have our phones out at the office,” Nat explains, as though teaching kindergarten. “Steve and I have a more _analog_ friendship.”

“All right, all right,” Steve pipes up while he scrolls through his phone, looking for a good picture of Bucky, “stop pissing over me, please. Oh, hey!”

Just as he’s trying to decide between four of the pictures he’s saved that Bucky has sent him, wondering if Bucky would mind if he showed Nat that picture of him in the sheer shirt from before their first date, a text message comes in from Bucky himself, and it just so happens to be a selfie.

It’s a really cute picture of Bucky in his kitchen, looking a little sad, but in a really fucking adorable way, with a little raincloud doodled above his head. The caption:

**[Bucky** 🎈 **(10:38pm)]** Miss you, punk.

Melting at how positively _adorable_ his boyfriend is, Steve taps on the photo to open it full size, and scootches toward Nat to show her. “Look at him, isn’t he _perfect?_ ”

But Nat doesn’t say anything. And when Steve glances sideways at her, her face has gone white. Like she’s looking at a ghost.

“What?” Steve asks, a chill running through him at the expression on her face. “Nat, what is it?”

But then, all at once, it’s gone. Just like it was never there at all. She shakes her head, and smiles at Steve, tucking herself under his arm in a familiar gesture that makes Steve wonder suddenly if he just imagined that stricken expression, projecting some kind of horror onto her because he’s nervous about what his judgy friends will think of his perfect boyfriend.

And sure enough: “Nothing, babe,” Nat is already telling him, smiling softly, and taking his phone to get a better look at Bucky’s picture. “He’s gorgeous, is all.”

🎈

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **Next time:**   
> 


	7. Seven: October 6th

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> SO here we are! As you may have realized from the end of the last chapter, we are starting to get into the thick of it. As such, this is your reminder to make sure you mind the tags!! We're going to come up against some of the warnings this chapter, and many chapters moving forward, so watch out for yourself, and feel free to ask about any tags you're worried about or need clarification on.
> 
> For info on which warnings in particular are cropping up this chapter, jump to the end notes. But be warned, they may contain some spoilers.

It’s early — six, maybe six-thirty in the morning — and Bucky is involved in leisurely drinking his coffee, sitting at his home desk as he refreshes himself on his notes for the patients he’ll be seeing today, when he gets the email.

The address is just a series of numbers, letters, and characters with no coherency. Easily passed off as spam. But Bucky recognizes it. Would recognize it anywhere, everywhere, for the rest of his life.

_Natalia_.

Instantly, his stomach drops, and his heart stops. It’s been _eleven years_ , and he hasn’t heard from her once. And it’s not like he was going to reach out to her after the way things ended between them. What could she possibly _want?_

But he loves her unconditionally, and he always will. So he opens the email.

Just like everything else she’s ever sent to him, the email is encrypted. But he knows her codes — apparently, still knows them by _heart_ — so it doesn’t take any time at all to decrypt. And when it’s decrypted, it’s just an email. Written out like a letter. So that hasn’t changed either, then.

_James,_

_I understand how alarming this must be, me writing to you out of the blue after so long, and I am truly sorry if I cause you any pain in doing this. But I just found out you’re dating my best friend, Steve Rogers. And from the gentle prodding I gave him, I get the impression you may not know that I’m friends with him, or that we work together, and he may not know about our shared history._

_I realize that this doesn’t reflect well on my investigative skills, but in my own defense, the last time I investigated someone Steve was interested in without him knowing, he got really mad. The fact that I was completely right, and the guy was a lying swindler, didn’t seem to bring him much comfort, so I stopped doing that. Also, he’s only ever referred to you as Bucky, which I’m guessing is the name you’re going by now. I didn’t make the connection until I saw your picture last night, and for that, too, I’m sorry._

_I’m also_ _deeply_ _sorry for this next part. Normally in this circumstance, I would have seen your picture, recognized that it was you, and told Steve that the person he’s dating now is the same person I dated years ago. And we’d laugh off the awkwardness, and I’d give him my blessing, and tell him that he chose well when he chose you, and we’d be done. But I can’t do that this time, because Steve knows what we did. He knows about our past, and Hydra, and how you and I got out, and all of that. I told him about it years ago. When I did, he let me finish — all the while terrified he was going to hate me for it — and as soon as I was done, he pulled me close, and hugged me, and told me that nothing I said had changed his mind about me. He loves and accepts me, and he’ll still love and accept you, too._

_But I can’t tell him about you, because if he knows_ _you_ _are the James I fell in love with, he would know about your involvement with Hydra. And it’s not my place to tell him anything about your past. I could never do that to you, break your trust like that. Even if I haven’t had your trust in years. But I also won’t lie to him. He doesn’t deserve that._

_So that’s why I’m writing you. You have to tell him. You can’t let him go on falling deeper and deeper in love with you the way I can see he is, without letting him know about this major part of your past._ _Our_ _past. He will find out, one way or another, because he’s smart, and he cares about you. If you’re not the one who tells him, he’ll be crushed, and that will be your fault._

_Don’t do that to him._

_We are not what was done to us, you and I. And we are not what we did. He’d never, ever think of you that way. But he deserves to know, and I think you know that as well as I do._

_I’m sorry. I really, really am. Hurting you is the last thing I have ever wanted to do, and here I am, doing it again. I’m including my phone number at the bottom of this letter. Please call if you want to._

_I love you so much, James. You know that. I miss you terribly._

_Yours always,_

_Natalia_

_917-555-9485_

For a long moment after he finishes reading, Bucky just sits there, unmoving. Barely breathing. _Fuck_.

He knows she’s right. Even as he rereads the email another three times, something in him already knew she was right before she even wrote to him. He knows that he has to tell Steve, if he wants to keep seeing him. He knows that Steve deserves that. More than that, but at _least_ that. He’s been stalling — trying to buy time in a relationship that makes him feel happier, safer, and more content than he’s felt since he was fifteen years old. He knew time was running out for him, but now this. Steve’s other best friend — the one Bucky hasn’t met yet — is _Natalia_. Bucky’s ex-girlfriend, the former love of his life. The sole reason he’s alive and free.

What are the fucking _odds?_

And their shared past has made him paranoid, for good reason, so something twinges in Bucky’s mind. What _are_ the odds? How the hell did he randomly meet and start dating a man who knows the only other person in the world besides himself who actually _got away_ from Hydra? Could something about this somehow be _planned?_

Has this all been a trap all along?

No. It can’t be that. Bucky may only have known Steve for about two months, but he would have figured that out. Would have seen _something_ in Steve that wasn’t the pure, utterly trustworthy golden retriever of a man that he’s fallen in love with.

Right?

Right. No, he _is_ right. Because this is _Natalia_. Natalia, who would have given her life for Bucky. Natalia, for whom Bucky would _still_ give his life, in a heartbeat.

Natalia — and Bucky knows this more solidly than he knows _anything_ — would never betray him. Not ever.

He’s got his phone out before he’s really decided what he’s doing, and maybe it’s better that way, because at least he’s dialing before he can rethink and change his mind.

She answers with just one word, but the sound of her voice shoots him through a vortex of time and space, to a very different time, and a very different place, and a very different love.

“Romanoff.”

Bucky smirks. “I’m genuinely astonished that Natalia Alianovna Romanova didn’t know I changed my name,” he says in lieu of a greeting.

He can hear, and almost _see_ her smile as she greets him warmly. “Hi, James,” she says, slow and sweet like molasses, and her voice calling him by his given name transforms him. Turns him from Bucky, self-realized and grown, into _James_ , young, and desperate, and fucked up, and _so_ in love.

“Hi, Nat,” he replies, and he can’t help but smile, too. It’s so _good_ to hear her voice. It’s been so long.

“I try not to invade your privacy,” Nat tells him in answer to his opening statement.

Bucky lets out a small huff of a laugh. “Are you telling me,” he asks slowly, “that you _don’t_ keep tabs on me? Because you _know_ I can tell when you’re lying.”

“Only most of the time,” Nat challenges. “And yes, I guess I ‘keep tabs on you,’” she admits, “but only so far as to try to make sure you’re not in any imminent danger from our old friends.”

Oh. Well. That’s.... “That’s kind of you,” Bucky says, touched.

There’s a beat of weighted silence before Nat speaks, quiet and honest. “I love you, James.”

“I know,” Bucky murmurs, because he does. “I love you too, Natasha.”

“I know,” she echoes, because she does, too. She pauses again. Then: “So is it a legal name change?”

“You changed yours,” Bucky accuses.

“Not really,” Nat points out, and Bucky laughs.

“Yeah,” he answers her question, “it’s all just documents, though.”

Nat hums in understanding. “Your middle name?” she asks.

“Mhm,” Bucky hums right back. “Just dropped the James. And, of course, the last name, but you were there for that. No one’s looking for a Buchanan Barnes. Not when they all only know me as James or Yasha Zimaev.” He shrugs, even though she can’t see, and continues, “‘Sides, my mom used to call me Bucky when I was a kid, so it’s always been pretty natural. James will always be my _name_ , though.”

“I get that,” Nat replies, and then they both settle into the awkward silence preceding what they both know they’re really on this call to talk about.

After a moment, Bucky decides to just jump in.

“So you know Steve, huh?” he asks.

“We work at the paper together,” Nat responds. “He’s my best friend.”

“Ah,” Bucky says. Of course they work together. “Shoulda put that one together myself, shouldn’t I?”

Nat chuckles a little. “He ever use my name?” she asks.

“Just ‘Nat.’ I thought…Natalie, maybe,” Bucky finishes sheepishly.

“Also technically my name,” Nat points out.

“Hey, give me a break,” Bucky laughs, “you’re not the only Nat in the world.” _Although,_ his mind helpfully interjects, _you were to me._ “And I didn’t even know you were in New York until about fifteen minutes ago.”

“No, you’re right,” Nat concedes, “that’s on me. I didn’t really think you’d want to hear from me, after…,” she trails off, then just finishes with, “everything.”

“Well,” Bucky says. “You weren’t _wrong.”_

She laughs again, but it’s tinged with something sad.

“I’m right about this too, you know,” Nat tells him after another beat.

“You are,” Bucky agrees. She always is. “I do know.”

“So then,” Nat asks slowly. “Are you gonna tell him?”

Bucky sighs. That’s the big question, isn’t it?

“I’m not sure yet,” he confesses.

“Okay, I have to ask,” Nat finally says frankly, her careful niceties audibly dropping. “Did you _really_ think you were gonna get away with him never finding out?”

Bucky sighs again, this time accompanied by a groan of frustration that launches him out of his desk chair as he starts to agitatedly pace around his living room.

“I don’t know, Natasha,” he tells her honestly. “I haven’t actually had anything like this since…well, since _you_. Nothing was ever going to be serious enough that this would even come up, and that was an intentional move on my part.” He huffs, irritated. “I didn’t plan for Steve Rogers.”

“No one does,” Natasha agrees. “He just swoops in, and loves you hard enough that your whole life changes. Did it to me, too.”

Bucky stops short. Steve did not mention Natasha in their previous-relations chat. Then again, Steve doesn’t know that Bucky was once in love with her, so that could be conceivably why.

But: “Not like _that!_ ” Natasha cries, accurately interpreting Bucky’s silence, and cutting through his thought process. “It was more of a... _family_ thing with me. Gross.”

“ _Gross?_ ” Bucky asks, honestly a little offended that Nat would speak of the absolute paragon of objective physical perfection that is Steve with a word like ‘ _gross_.’

“Don’t get me wrong, he’s hot,” Nat says, unfazed, “there’s no denying _that_. But I’ve known him for like seven years, any chance of me looking at him like that anymore went out the window a _long_ time ago.”

Bucky snorts. “All right, fair enough,” he concedes.

“For what it’s worth,” Natasha says, her tone much more gentle than a moment ago, “I think you should tell him. He loves you hard. He’ll understand.”

She’s right, and Bucky knows it. She’s always right. “Yeah,” he whispers.

“You love him?” she asks. Direct and to the point.

As soon as she asks, he knows for sure that it’s true. He can keep pretending he’s still mulling it over for as long as he wants, but that doesn’t change the fact that Bucky is madly in love with Steve Rogers, and he knows it.

“Yeah,” he confirms out loud. “Hard,” he adds, using her words, and smiling softly.

“He’s worth it, babe,” Natasha says kindly, a smile in her voice, too.

Bucky nods, even though it’s only to himself. “You’re right,” he tells her. Like always. “He is. Thank you, Natasha.”

“You’re welcome, James.”

They’re both quiet, then, for a few moments. She may be on the other side of a phone call, but for those few seconds, Bucky feels like Nat is in the room with him. He can feel her presence, just like he used to.

It’s nice. Like home.

After a minute or two, Nat speaks up.

“Do you know when you’re gonna tell him?” she asks.

“We’re having lunch today,” Bucky answers. “I’m coming by the paper to pick him up, and we’re gonna get hot dogs in the park.”

“Cute.”

“I’ll tell him then. Before I have a chance to lose my nerve.”

“That’s something I’ve never seen,” Natasha says.

“Ah, then I can still surprise you.”

Natasha scoffs on the other end of the line. Of course she would believe the best in him, even when Bucky isn’t so sure he has it in him himself.

“Hey,” Bucky says, realizing something, “you write under a pseudonym, don’t you?”

Nat hums the affirmative. “Nicole Roman.”

Bucky smiles despite himself, and shakes his head. “Damn,” he mutters. “No wonder her pieces always made me think of you.”

Nat’s warm chuckle over the phone makes his heart skip, even after all this time.

“I’ll talk to you soon, Bucky,” she says. “I’m sure I’ll see you pretty soon, too.”

“Hopefully,” Bucky agrees.

“You’ll be fine,” Nat tells him bluntly. “I love you, James.”

“I love you, too, Natalia,” Bucky breathes.

They say their goodbyes, and Bucky hangs up.

So. He’s doing this, then.

After his first few sessions of the day, during his lunch break, Bucky arrives at Steve and Natasha’s office building with his heart pounding in his ears. Steve told him over the phone last night to just come up to his floor when he got there, that Steve might not be done with the off-site interview he was going to do this morning exactly on time, and that Bucky should just come by his desk whenever he arrived. So Bucky takes the elevator up to the floor Steve gave him, tells the receptionist his name because Steve put him on some kind of guest list, and then searches out the desk with the ‘S. Rogers’ nameplate, right next to the ‘N. Romanoff’ desk. Neither of them are anywhere nearby, though, and there’s a cluster of cops standing around a desk in the other corner, which is not helping Bucky’s nerves.

He casts around, searching for a familiar face. However, he’s not prepared for the ice that runs through his veins when he sees one.

He’s standing across the room. It doesn’t look like he’s spotted Bucky yet. He’s dressed like a detective — shirt, tie, shoulder holster, badge — but other than that, he looks exactly the same as the last time Bucky saw him, almost fourteen years ago. When he hoped with all his being that he would never look on that disgusting face ever again.

Brock Rumlow.

_Crossbones_.

Bucky’s vision starts whiting out. He can’t breathe. Can’t move. And then Rumlow glances over at him. Does a startled double take. Recognizes him.

_Smiles_.

And the next thing Bucky knows, he’s stumbling into the elevator and desperately smashing the button for the ground floor. He’s out of the building and in the alleyway beside it before he’s fully aware of himself again, leaning heavily on his shoulder against the wall, and gasping for air. What is Rumlow doing here? _Here?_ Last time Bucky saw him, Crossbones was still abusing him in Russia. Why the _actual fuck_ is he in New York, in the office where Bucky’s new _boyfriend_ works?!

The odds on all of this now seem impossible. And Bucky can’t for the life of him remember if, all those years ago, Natasha and Crossbones ever met. He remembers that when she was new, Crossbones was away for a long while. He remembers that the two of them got out before Crossbones got back for good. But he can’t remember if Nat was around when the bastard ever came back temporarily, or if Crossbones had left yet when Natalia first arrived.

Nat would never hurt him. She would _never_ betray him.

But...what if Bucky’s wrong?

“Well, well,” a horrifyingly familiar voice singsongs behind Bucky, sending chills up his spine, “if it isn’t the goddamn Winter Soldier himself.”

Bucky turns slowly around to face Brock Rumlow, and years of trauma and abuse. His face is set. He will _not_ let this evil fuck shake him, no matter how hard he tries.

“So,” Rumlow drawls out slowly. “ _You're_ Rogers’ new project.”

Bucky lets out a breath, and squares his shoulders. “Go away, Brock,” he says deliberately, trying to push past Rumlow and leave, but Brock, taller and bulkier than Bucky, blocks his way.

“You must think you’re real special, don’t you?” Rumlow continues as Bucky falls back a step, seething. “You really think someone like Rogers, with his baby blues and all-American moral righteousness, would actually choose someone like _you_ out of your own _merit?_ ”

Bucky tries getting past Rumlow on the other side, but Rumlow easily blocks him again.

“See, you may not know this yet,” Rumlow continues to taunt, clearly enjoying the sound of his own voice, “but Rogers only goes out with people he thinks he can _fix_. But you and I both know there’s no fixing you, huh?”

“Leave me alone, Brock,” Bucky spits, planting his feet in case he needs to attempt physical force against a cop who’s both bigger _and_ stronger than him to get away.

But Rumlow isn’t done. “Does he know yet? About who you are?” When Bucky doesn’t answer, he laughs in Bucky’s face. “He doesn’t, does he? Oh, this is _good_. You think he’ll actually _stay_ with you once he finds out?”

Bucky looks up at Rumlow’s awful face, and hisses at him with vitriol, “Fuck you.”

“If you want,” Rumlow shrugs, unfazed. “But if I remember right, it was always _me_ that fucked _you_ , wasn't it?”

With that, Bucky forcibly pushes past Rumlow at last, and starts to leave. Until Rumlow calls after him.

“You think the old crew would like Rogers as much as you do?”

Bucky stops cold. _Fuck._ He braces himself, and turns around. Slowly and clearly, with every word punctuated, he asks, “What the fuck do you want, Rumlow?”

“Break up with him,” Rumlow says, examining his own hand, like he’s bored by this. “Today.”

Bucky rolls his eyes. “Jesus fucking Christ, Brock,” he groans, “if you think taking Steve from me means I’ll come running back to _you_ , then you’re not just evil, you’re a fucking moron.”

Rumlow laughs again. “First of all,” he begins, “we’ll see about that, won’t we? But that’s not my angle, little one.”

Bucky gets full-body chills from the old pet name that he’d forced his mind to forget.

“You want me to take care of you again, then you gotta come ask nicely,” Rumlow continues. “But if you stay with Rogers — if he comes in tomorrow morning all happy and dopey like he has been these past few weeks — I think some of our old friends would be interested in… _meeting_ him. Don’t you?”

Rumlow grins like a shark as Bucky’s heart begins to race with fear. No. Not Steve. _No_.

“I’m just trying to help you, Yasha,” Rumlow murmurs. “Oh, but no, your name isn’t James anymore, is it?” he asks, delighting in this, starting to advance on Bucky. “It’s _Bucky_ now, right?”

“Don’t fucking call me that,” Bucky growls, low.

“Why not, little one?” Rumlow asks, towering over Bucky now. “You picked it, didn’t you? When you thought you could run and hide from us? Didn’t you?” he presses, and Bucky’s resolve finally breaks.

“ _You_ don’t get to walk right back into my life,” he snaps, “and call me by the name I chose so I could be free of you. You never took care of me, _Brock_ ,” he spits the name from his mouth like poison. “You raped me. Repeatedly. And beat me, you may remember, sometimes to the edge of death. _I_ remember.”

Bucky is burning up with an anger he’s been trying so hard for the last thirteen years to get past. But now, here, staring his abuser in the face, he is _consumed_ by it. Overcome by it. It fuels him to take a step forward, into Crossbones’ space, emboldening him.

“Every time you made me watch you fuck someone else,” Bucky spits. “Every time you made _me_ fuck someone so _you_ could watch. The scars you personally gave me, the broken bones, and all the bruises that didn’t scar. I remember it all.”

“Aw, come on, Yasha,” Crossbones whines, “you were into it, too.”

“You know I wasn’t,” Bucky argues, his voice rising, “that was the _point_ , you were actively brainwashing me at the time!”

Crossbones rolls his eyes this time. “So I kicked you around a little,” he admits, “it’s not like you were so perfect. Always mouthing off, making me mad.” He fixes Bucky with a chilling look. “You deserved what I gave you. But I _did_ protect you, you remember _that?_ I stood up for you when the others weren’t so keen on keeping you alive. I gave you food, clean water, shelter, and a cock to fill you up when you needed it. I was good to you.” He pauses dramatically, and then adds, “I loved you.”

“Please,” Bucky scoffs. “I haven’t believed that since long before I left.”

“You believed it once,” Crossbones says, but Bucky knows this game.

“I’m not doing this with you, Rumlow,” he tells him, ending this once and for all. “Fuck off. I’m pretty good at taking care of myself now, and if any ‘old friends’ want to come see me, I’d be happy to show them.” He starts to turn away to leave, calling out behind him, “Looking forward to never seeing your ugly goddamn face ever again, Brock.”

And he’s almost gone. He is. But as Bucky begins to stomp out of the alley, Rumlow calls after him, stopping him in his tracks.

“You keep seeing Rogers, I’ll kill him myself.”

Bucky turns back, and the look on Rumlow’s face is so sinister, and so familiar, it freezes him on the spot.

“And then,” Crossbones continues, “I’ll come find you, and fuck you ‘til you’re raw before I bring you back to Russia, and your true family. That’s the deal… _Bucky_.”

And with that, Crossbones brushes past a stock-still Bucky, and goes back inside the office building, leaving Bucky behind to endure his entire, carefully-built world of safety crashing down all around him.

x

**Voicemail from Steve Rogers (1:23pm):**

_“Hey, Buck, it’s Stevie. I’m just calling because I got back for our lunch date late, and I think I may have missed you. I’m so sorry, baby, I’m gonna make it up to you, I promise. Call me back when you can, or send me a text, either way. Maybe we can work out some dinner plans since I screwed up our lunch plans. I can’t believe myself, day two of being your boyfriend and I’ve already let you down. I swear, I will not be making a habit of this. Call me. I love you. Bye.”_

x

**Voicemail from Steve Rogers (6:07pm):**

_“Hey, baby, I just got outta work, and I still haven’t heard from you. I’m guessing your day got really busy. If you want to come over when you’re free, I would fuckin’ love to see you. I miss you somethin’ terrible. Call me when you can, or just show up if you’d rather. I hope everything’s okay. I love you so much, pal. I’ll talk to you soon, I hope.”_

x

**[Steve (6:41pm)]** Hey, pal, you get my voicemails? I miss you. Hope you’re okay.

**[Steve (8:03pm)]** I love you. Are you coming over tonight do you think?

**[Steve (8:40pm)]** Babe?

x

Bucky finally pulls himself together enough to know what he needs to do. Honestly, he knew the instant Crossbones threatened Steve’s life. He’s just been stalling all day, trying to make it through a marathon of debilitating panic attacks, and hoping he could somehow think of a way out of this. But you can’t think your way out of Hydra’s clutches, Bucky knows this. And apparently — though it took him roughly thirteen years to learn this part — you can’t just run away, either.

He never should have thought he could escape them. Some part of him always knew that was a pipe dream.

So when he finally accepts the truth of his reality — the thing that’s _always_ been true in his reality — he knows what he needs to do.

Steve looks so relieved, and so incredibly _happy_ to see him, it breaks Bucky’s heart a hundred times to look at him.

“Bucky,” Steve breathes, leaning in to kiss him, and Bucky lets him. Just this one last time.

It’s too short. Any last kiss from Steve Rogers would be far, far too short.

“Where’ve you been, gorgeous?” Steve asks, opening the door wide, and stepping back to let Bucky in. “Did you get my messages?”

“Yeah, I got them,” Bucky replies, but he doesn’t move. He doesn’t want to go inside Steve’s warm, welcoming apartment just to hurt him. “Sorry I didn’t call you back.”

“That’s okay, honey,” Steve says right away. “Come in, why are you still in the hall?”

Bucky bites his lip. He really, _really_ doesn’t want to do this. But he has to protect Steve. He’d do anything at all, no matter how painful, to protect Steve.

“Actually, I can’t stay,” he manages to get out. “Can you step out here for a minute?”

Steve frowns, confused, but obliges Bucky, stepping out into the hall with him, and shutting his apartment door behind him.

“What is it, honey?” he asks quietly. Bucky can hear the string of anxiety wrapped tight around his words. This hurts, it hurts, it _hurts_.

Bucky takes a deep breath, drops his eyes to Steve’s chest, and just says it.

“I don’t think this is working for me.”

He can see Steve’s face fall, even without meeting his gaze. “What?” Steve breathes.

Bucky continues the speech he rehearsed, because he has to. “It has absolutely nothing to do with anything about you, Steve, I need you to know that. I told you I don’t know how to be in a real relationship, and I thought I could do it, but I realize now that I can’t, and I cannot tell you how sorry I am that I let it get this far.”

Steve blinks, clearly trying to work through this sudden change. “I don’t understand, Buck,” he whispers sadly, “I thought this was going really well?”

“I _really_ wanted this to work, Steve,” Bucky tells him honestly. He hasn’t rehearsed this part. He needs to stick to the story he came up with to protect Steve, but this is important, and he can’t just not say it. “I knew I liked you a lot that first night we met, and I really thought that— I’m older now, and maybe I could do this right.” Bucky pauses, trying hard not to let himself cry. “But I haven’t,” he continues. “I haven’t been fair to you at all. I haven’t been honest with you. You deserve so much more than I am capable of giving you—and I realize that sounds like an ‘it’s not you, it’s me’ kind of dick thing to say, but I didn’t mean it like that. You just— You’re really wonderful, Steve, and I wish—” Bucky stops abruptly, because this is _not_ what he was planning to tell him, and honestly, what can he say? That he wishes he didn’t have to do this? That he wishes he was here to tell Steve that he loves him, maybe more than he’s ever loved _anyone_ , and not to unwillingly break his heart? That he wishes he could look at the rest of his life ahead of him and see Steve written across every page, but that the rest of his life is already written, stained in blood and heartache?

No.

Steve doesn’t say anything for a moment. Finally, Bucky allows himself to look back up at Steve’s face, broken open and still so, so kind. Bucky is going to fall apart.

“Bucky,” Steve says after a minute, “I don’t want this to end. Tell me what you need, and I’ll give it to you. Do you need space? Did we go too fast? I can slow down, we can take a few steps back if that’s what you need. I don’t mind working through this with you—I _want_ to work through this with you. I just— I don’t want to end this.”

“I know,” Bucky says, setting his jaw and his resolve. Steve is too good. Too precious. Bucky will hurt them both if it means saving Steve, he will. He has to. “That’s why I’m doing it.”

Steve’s mouth drops open in shock. _God_ , this fucking _hurts_.

“I’m really sorry, Steve,” Bucky tells him, choking on the tears that are about to start welling in his eyes. “I’m _really_ sorry.”

“Buck—” Steve begins softly, reaching out towards him, and this is way too much. Bucky cannot handle _this_.

“I have to go,” Bucky sniffs, shying away from Steve’s outstretched hand. “I can’t— I’m so sorry.”

As he leaves, rushing down the hall like a fucking coward, away from this life and this future that he so desperately wanted, Steve is still just standing there, reaching out to him.

🎈

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Specific warnings for this chapter:  
> \- Characters talk about rape/non-con, abuse, brainwashing, and domestic violence that happened in the past.  
> \- An abuser uses abusive language.
> 
> **Next time:**   
> 


	8. Eight: October & November

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> With the last chapter and this one, I just want to point you all to the Happy Ending tag. We're gonna be okay. Breathe with me, we'll make it through.
> 
> As always, if you have concerns or questions about tags, warnings, or anything else, feel free to ask about it in the comments or come find me on twitter and ask me there. I'm more than happy to respond!  
> [@apblaidd](https://twitter.com/apblaidd)

Bucky starts crying as soon as he turns away from Steve. He quietly weeps on the train home, trying not to draw too much attention, and waving away the few kind strangers who ask him if he’s all right. His sleeve is snotty and wet by the time he’s inside his building, taking the stairs up to his floor, his single focus getting _home_ so he can fully break apart.

He’s almost there, so very close, when a voice comes out of nowhere, and makes him jump.

“What happened?”

“Jesus _Christ_ , Natalia!” Bucky snaps, finally spotting her coming out of the shadows in the hallway outside his apartment. His heart is racing again — like it has been most of the day — from the startle she gave him.

“I thought you were going to tell him?” Nat asks. This is the first time he’s seen her face in eleven years, and she’s interrogating him. “Did you change your mind?”

“ _Boundaries,_ Natashenka,” Bucky sputters, fishing his keys out of his pocket to unlock his door. If she’s been part of this, he’ll rip her heart out of her chest himself, but he still can’t bring himself to fully believe that. “Leave me alone, for _fuck’s_ sake! How did you even find out this quickly?”

“Steve texted me, and I wasn’t far.” Nat replies simply. Nothing in her face betrays anything sinister, but it wouldn’t, would it? Her poker face has always been unmatched. “He doesn’t know I came here. I just want to know what happened, Yashechka, that’s all,” she tries to assure him, trading diminutive for diminutive. “Are you okay?”

“Is Steve?” Bucky asks instead, because he can’t fucking help himself.

“That wasn’t my question,” Natasha tells him.

“No,” Bucky agrees, “it was mine.”

Natasha pauses, but then finally relents. “I haven’t seen him yet,” she says, “but he sounded pretty devastated over text.”

_Fuck._

“He’s Steve Rogers,” Nat continues, surely seeing Bucky’s own devastation in his face, no matter how hard he tries to hide it. His own poker face has never been anything close to hers. “He flies high, and when he crashes, it’s pretty spectacular. But he doesn’t stay down. He’ll be okay.”

Bucky doesn’t say anything. Can’t say anything. Can’t look at her.

“Will you?” she asks after a pause. It’s a valid question.

But Bucky just sighs, because the answer is no, and he can’t tell her that. “I don’t really feel like talking, Natalia,” he says, leaning his forehead on the closed door.

Nat is silent for a moment. Then: “Okay. I’ll go.”

As she turns away, his forehead still pressed to his door, Bucky breaks. Maybe she is working with Crossbones and Hydra to trap him. She might be. But she’s _Natasha_. She’s his, the same way he’s hers.

“Please don’t tell him,” he begs her, breathing it against the wood of his front door before she’s gone. “I know I can’t stop you if that’s what you’ve decided, but— _please_ —”

“I won’t.”

That gets Bucky to look over at her. Nat smiles at him sadly.

“He knows about me,” she tells him, “it’s not my place to tell him about you.”

And with that, she’s gone. And Bucky is all alone.

Natasha has taken this train a thousand times before, she just never knew before today that it was the train between her ex-boyfriend’s apartment and her current best friend’s place. Steve means everything to her, but so does James. Now, she’s finding herself traveling from one to the other, trying to tend to both of them. But she never was very good at tending other people’s wounds.

Sam is there, waiting at the open door, when Nat gets to the home he shares with Steve. Thank the gods Sam was here when it happened, she thinks. Sam is much better than Natasha is at caring for people when they’re hurt. It’s an instinct she just hasn’t learned how to fake. And she sure wasn’t born with it. Or maybe it was ripped out of her at an early age by the old ‘family,’ who knows?

“How is he?” Nat asks Sam quietly as she jogs down the hall to him.

Sam shrugs helplessly. “He hasn’t really said anything beyond what he texted you.”

It was such a short text. Only, ‘ _Bucky broke it off_ ,’ and that’s it. No information, the brevity of it giving away Steve’s distress.

Nat nods, and walks inside, Sam right behind her.

Steve is there. He’s sitting on the couch, just staring into space, his eyebrows furrowed and his eyes wet. Natasha goes to him, sitting down next to him so he knows she’s here.

But Steve doesn’t say anything. Doesn’t even acknowledge her beyond sliding one hand off of his own knee and resting it half on hers. She completes the movement for him, lacing their fingers together, and squeezing Steve’s hand.

“Babe,” she murmurs, as Sam sits down on the coffee table, facing them, “what happened?”

Steve shakes his head, just barely, still staring at nothing. “I don’t know,” he whispers.

“Did he say anything?” Sam asks gently.

“He said this isn’t working for him,” Steve says, almost monotone. “That he wanted it to work, but it’s not. He didn’t want to work through it together. He just ended it.”

Sam reaches out and holds Steve’s other hand.

“I don’t understand,” Steve continues. His voice is gathering more nuance and inflection, and it’s clear that’s because he’s about to start crying. “He was over last night. He told me he was ‘really fucking happy’ to be with me. We almost had sex? And then we were gonna have lunch together today, but I got back late, I missed him. And suddenly, he doesn’t want to be with me anymore.”

“I don’t think it was your fault, Steve,” Sam says reassuringly, while Natasha sits on her conversation with James this morning. None of this makes sense.

Steve doesn’t say anything, but he finally meets Sam’s gaze. Then he looks down at Natasha. At a loss for words, she nuzzles his shoulder in sympathy. And then the dam breaks.

Steve sobs for a while. Sam and Nat take turns holding him, rubbing his back, and stroking his hair. He doesn’t say much beyond, ‘ _I don’t understand_ ,’ and Bucky’s name, again and again. He just cries.

After a few hours, Steve wears himself out and cries himself dry enough for Sam to put him to bed. When Sam comes out, Nat has perched herself up on the kitchen counter, and poured herself a glass of the good vodka she keeps in Sam and Steve’s freezer. She silently offers it to Sam when he gets to her, and he accepts, wincing as he swallows, which is adorable.

“I don’t like seeing him like this,” Sam says quietly, leaning on his elbows on the counter while Natasha sips from her glass. “He’s _never_ like this.”

“He was when Peggy died,” Nat points out.

Sam sighs, and nods reluctantly. “That’s what worries me,” he admits. “I haven’t seen him like this since then, and we both know how he dealt with that.”

“I don’t think he’s gonna make another attempt,” Nat says, dropping her voice to almost a whisper now.

Sam purses his lips, but nods again. “I hope you’re right,” he says. Natasha hands him back her vodka.

They sit like that for a minute, passing the glass of vodka back and forth between them until it’s gone. Sam fetches the bottle out of the freezer to pour another.

This time, after he puts the bottle back, Sam takes Natasha’s hand in his.

“You wanna spend the night?” he asks her softly, and presses a kiss to the back of her hand.

Nat smirks at him. “I don’t think _now_ is the moment to tell Steve about us,” she points out.

Sam snorts. “I didn’t mean together,” he clarifies. “Although _damn_ would I like that.”

Natasha grins despite herself.

“I actually meant I’d stay on the couch,” Sam says, “and you’d stay in my room.”

“Very chivalrous.”

“I try.” Sam smiles at her. It’s soft and tender in a way Natasha is still trying to get used to. It’s nice. “I just thought you might want to be here when he gets up,” he tells her, “and I don’t want you to have to go home at this hour and then just have to come back here early.”

“That’s thoughtful of you,” Nat says, squeezing his hand. “But I can sleep on the couch like I usually would, you don’t need to give me your room.”

“Like hell,” Sam rebuts, grinning up at her. “No way I’m sleeping all cozy in my comfy bed while my beautiful and amazing girlfriend roughs it out here on the couch.”

Nat considers this. “Your bed _is_ comfy,” she agrees. She always suspected as much, and very recently confirmed it herself.

Sam nods. “Good, then. You want PJs?”

“Please.”

Natasha lets Sam help her down from the kitchen counter, and hums into his mouth when he kisses her sweetly.

In Sam’s room, while he’s picking out pajamas for her, and grabbing a pillow and blanket to take back to the couch, Sam confesses, “I just wish we knew what happened to make Bucky want to break it off like that. They both seemed _really_ happy.”

“Yeah,” is all Natasha says.

She wishes that, too. She really, really does.

🎈

“Bucky?”

Bucky glances up from staring blankly at a spot on the floor to the attentive, concerned gazes of both Kate and America, both of whom he’d assumed were on their way out, since their group session just ended.

In fact, he now realizes, they’re not the only ones who have stuck around. His entire group is still here, aside from RJ, who couldn’t attend today. They’re all gathered around each other, a few feet back from Kate and America, but all staring at Bucky intently.

“What?” Bucky asks, blinking owlishly at all of them.

“Are you okay?” Kate asks.

Bucky blinks again. “Yeah, of course,” he assures them all, even though that might not be entirely true. He’s touched by their concern. “Do I seem not okay?”

“You seem really sad,” America tells him bluntly.

“Really, _really_ sad,” Nate agrees.

“For the past three weeks,” Kate finishes.

“Three weeks?” Bucky parrots, and every single one of them nods.

“Six sessions,” Eli provides helpfully. “So yeah, three weeks.”

“Have I—?” Bucky begins, unsure. “Have I been neglecting you guys at all?”

His question is met with an immediate chorus of fervent ‘no’s.

“No, of course not, Dr. B,” Cassie presses. “But we’ve all been worried, RJ even told us in the group chat that you’ve been avoiding _him_.”

“I have not been avoiding RJ,” Bucky defends himself. “I see him just as much as I always do.”

“No, I think I misspoke,” Cassie says, “not _avoiding_ , I guess—”

“He says you’re not telling him what’s wrong,” David supplies, and Cassie nods.

“He doesn’t— Nothing’s wrong,” Bucky lies.

“Clearly, _something_ is,” America argues.

“Yeah,” Billy agrees, “you were so happy before. And now you’re—”

“Really sad,” Kate says.

Bucky tilts his head, truly and genuinely moved. “You guys are really sweet,” he tells them truthfully. “I’m okay, I really am.”

“Are you, though?” Kate presses.

“Yes,” Bucky answers. “I will admit, I’ve been a little down lately. I had a blow, but I’m really gonna be fine, guys. Thanks for your concern, though,” he adds, smiling. “I’m touched you all care so much.”

“Of course we care,” America says. “Will you at least talk to RJ?”

“Or _someone_ ,” Teddy adds. “You have someone to talk to, right?”

Bucky sighs, smiling sadly at his little pack of avengers. “Okay,” he promises. “I’ll make sure I’m talking to someone. Thank you all.”

They all filter slowly out after that, repeatedly assuring him that they care about him. A few of them even give him comforting hugs. It’s sweet, it really is. And Bucky doesn’t want to break his promise to them.

But who the hell can he talk to about _this?_

🎈

Steve has been fucking miserable for a month. All he can do is throw himself so deeply into his work that he has no time to think about anything else at all. He feels slightly ridiculous. He and Bucky only dated for around two and a half months. Just two and a half months of Steve’s life, and he’s fucking _miserable_.

All the same, it may have been kind of fast, but Steve’s feelings for Bucky were very, very real. He fell in love with Bucky. He loved him. He _still_ loves him. And he’s pretty sure that’s not going to go away any time soon.

Steve has never had a connection with someone like he had with Bucky, not ever. Probably won’t ever have that again — that instant bond, the easy way he fell in love, the surety of it. Ten weeks may not be much in the grand scheme of things, not much time to know anything at all, but Steve knew. He knew that he was ready to spend the rest of his life with Bucky. Bucky _was_ Steve’s grand scheme.

Maybe it was a blessing that Bucky broke up with him, then. Maybe Steve was ready to throw his life away to someone who was always going to hurt him.

But the thing is, Steve Rogers is nothing if not _really_ good at his job. He investigates, and he reads people, and he’s _good_ at it. And he really, really doesn’t think Bucky ever wanted to hurt him.

Still, it comes as a knife-sharp surprise when, after finally leaving the office in the middle of the night one night, Steve steps into an empty train car to find that it’s not so empty after all. No, as the doors close behind Steve, the gorgeous man sitting halfway down the car, wrapped in a big scarf and a classy pea coat, with his curly brown hair piled on top of his head, looks up, and locks eyes with him.

Bucky.

“Sorry,” Steve says after the initial wave of pain at seeing this man who is not his washes over him. “I’ll go to the next one.”

He’s already started towards the door despite the train’s acceleration, when Bucky stops him.

“No— Jesus, just—” Bucky says stiltedly. “Sit down. It’s okay. The train is moving, for Christ’s sake.”

So Steve sits down next to the door, opposite Bucky, and as far away from him as he can. They both have miles to go before either of them is at their stop. This is going to be a long train ride.

Steve tries not to let himself glance over Bucky again, but he fails. Bucky’s wrapped up against the cold, but Steve can still see how thin he is, how gaunt and pale. Dark circles are pressed under his beautiful, tired eyes, sapped of their color tonight, not even a trace of blue in the grey. Steve wonders, before he forces himself to stop, how long it’s been since Bucky slept through the night. Since he ate a full meal.

There’s a long, long silence as Steve tries not to gaze at Bucky, tries not to look at him at all, tries not to cry. He listens to the rush of the subway, the rattle of the train on the rails. But there’s something he wants to ask, and he’s trying so hard not to.

But then he hears himself speaking anyway.

“Can I just—just ask you one thing?” Steve asks, glancing up at Bucky.

Bucky looks over at him, too, weary, and the pale grey of his eyes is too much to bear. He looks so tired. So small.

“Sure,” Bucky tells him. He sounds _sad_.

“Was I too much?” Steve blurts out before he can stop himself. “Did I push you to go too fast, was that it?”

“What?” Bucky asks in reply, his eyebrows shooting up toward his hairline. “No— God, Steve, no, it wasn’t anything like that.” He’s trying so hard to reassure Steve, despite everything _he_ must be feeling right now. He’s so _good_ , this _sucks_. “It wasn’t—it wasn’t _you_ at all. At _all_ , okay? You’re—” Bucky lets out a bitter laugh. “You’re _literally_ perfect. It’s my shit, it doesn’t have anything to do with you. I almost wish it did, but it doesn’t.”

Steve pauses again. He resolved never to push Bucky, ever, about anything. He doesn’t want to push. But he does want to say: “I wouldn’t mind staying with you while you deal with things, you know. I...I miss you.”

Maybe that was too much. Bucky stares down at his hands in his lap, and doesn’t answer for a while.

But then he does, and his voice cracks like he’s trying not to cry, too. “I miss you, too, Steve,” he admits, so quiet, it almost gets entirely swallowed by the rush of the train. “I really do.”

“Then why?” Steve presses. The dam has burst, and he can’t stop himself from babbling. “This is too hard, Buck. I promise you, I will give you _anything_ you need. Let me do that, please.”

“God, Steve, don’t you think I would?” Bucky demands, looking up at Steve again with shining eyes, fuck. “I _can’t_. I have— I’ve got skeletons in my closet that could really hurt you, okay? I don’t want that to happen to you. Please just—respect that. Let me go.”

It’s a weird thing to say, and something about it makes Steve want to press in and find out what he’s talking about. But he’s so earnest. It’s like he’s _begging_ Steve. And Steve would have given him anything.

He can give him this.

“Okay,” he breathes.

Bucky nods his thanks, and stares down at his hands again.

Steve gets off at the next stop.

🎈

It’s mid-November in New York, and it’s officially cold. Six weeks since he had to call things off with Steve, and Bucky is still lonely, and sad, and angry. Seeing him on the train two weeks ago — talking to him — Bucky can’t decide if that made things better or worse. He misses Steve bad. Real bad. Seeing his face was like gasping for air, and listening to him promise to give Bucky anything, and not being able to break down and tell him, _yes, yes of course, anything for you, my heart, my love,_ was the hardest thing Bucky has done in years. His kids are still worried about him, and he’s absolutely broken his promise to them. RJ has been around a lot, and Bucky told him about his relationship ending, but he can’t tell him about Hydra for fear of putting RJ in danger, too. He hasn’t touched his piano once.

And it’s so fucking _cold_ now. Ever since Russia, Bucky has fucking _hated_ the cold. So he’s stomping the snow from his shoes, and brushing it off of his coat on his way to his apartment, just hoping for a hot bath and an early night so he doesn’t have to remain conscious for any longer than necessary today. But when he turns the corner, and looks up from shaking the snow out of his hair, he stops short, and stares, wide-eyed.

There’s someone waiting for him at his front door again. But this time, it’s not Natasha.

It’s Steve.

🎈

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **Next time:**   
> 


	9. Nine: November 18th

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is quite possibly my very favorite chapter in this fic, and I'm so excited for you all to read it!
> 
> Leave me comments if you like! Seeing your reactions has been giving me LIFE, and I've been having fun talking more in depth about the characters with you guys!
> 
> Find me on twitter here: [@apblaidd](https://twitter.com/apblaidd)

Bucky narrows his eyes at Steve.

There he is. Just standing there. Outside Bucky’s apartment, like he still belongs there.

He looks…good. Really good, Bucky’s brain betrays him by noticing. Healthy. He’s grown a beard, and it makes him even _more_ unfairly attractive. It looks soft. Bucky’s hands twitch with how much he wants to reach out and touch, run his fingers through Steve’s new beard, pull him close and taste his mouth—

No. Bucky rips himself from that train of thought. Plants his feet, and narrows his eyes.

“Who let you in?” he asks Steve. Steve, who Bucky dumped without warning, who he lied to, who has absolutely no right to stand there next to Bucky’s front door with this look on his face like he _doesn’t_ completely hate Bucky’s guts.

He _should_ hate Bucky’s guts.

“Older lady downstairs,” Steve says casually, answering Bucky’s question. Fuck, when he talks, the beard catches the light, and sparkles like sunlight on the ocean, Bucky isn’t _okay_. “Real sweet. Very talkative. Kept trying to feed me rugelach.”

Bucky closes his eyes, and sighs.

“Goddamnit, Mrs. Makowski,” he mutters to himself. Then: “Fine,” he tells Steve, brushing past him to unlock his door. “Come in.”

Steve quietly follows Bucky inside and into the kitchen, taking off his shoulder bag and placing it upright on the kitchen table. Bucky doesn’t watch this. Instead, he goes to the sink to pour a glass of water, which he hands to Steve, then pours another for himself. But he doesn’t drink. He just places both hands on the counter, and leans heavily on his arms, letting his head fall forward.

“So when you said your first name is James,” Steve begins when Bucky shows no sign of speaking, or looking at him, “I gotta admit, it never even crossed my mind that you could be _Nat’s_ James.”

She told him, then. Bucky doesn’t fault her. He’s impressed it took her this long.

“There are a lot of us in the world, Steve,” Bucky says flatly, lifting his head and looking at Steve’s face at last, “you can’t be blamed for that.”

Steve still doesn’t look like he hates Bucky, and he really, really should. No, the expression on his face is _kind_. Which hurts way, way worse.

“I get it now,” Steve offers after a pause, wherein he just gazes at Bucky, and Bucky falls quietly apart all over again. “Why you said that you hadn’t been honest with me, I get it.” He takes a breath, then lowers his voice and says, “You could have told me.”

Bucky wets his lips. He knows exactly what Steve is getting at, but he can’t just admit it. He’s held on to this secret so long. To protect himself. To protect everyone around him. To protect _Steve_.

“Told you what?” he asks instead, even though he knows Steve is fully aware of his bluff.

And indeed, Steve sighs, and turns to rifle in his bag.

“On the train,” he begins, sifting through a series of files, “you said you didn’t want your past to hurt me. That’s kind of a weird thing to say when you’re breaking up with someone, but especially because I’ve heard it before. Nat said as much to me when we first started getting close, and she was trying to bail out. ‘Course, it turned out she was mostly just scared of being emotionally vulnerable, which I get, but still. So, when you said it, it pinged something in my brain. But you asked me to let you go, so I tried to let you go.”

He seems to find what he’s looking for, and pulls a manila file folder out of the messenger bag.

“Unrelated,” he continues, “there’s this cop I used to work with who’s always hanging around my office, because one of my coworkers will do his job for him. Interview this guy’s people of interest and report back, send out calls to the public for specific information, stuff like that. Lately, I’ve been looking into this guy on my personal time. I’ve had a suspicion for a _while_ that he’s associated with some white nationalist group or something — nothing too concrete, but some stuff he does and says has raised red flags for me — and it’s proved a pretty good distraction recently. What I found was this.”

Steve drops the file folder on the counter next to Bucky and flips it open, spreading its contents out for Bucky to see.

It’s a series of photographs. Pictures from CCTV, of Rumlow and Bucky talking in that alley.

Steve continues as Bucky stares at the photos, revealing a full report on Hydra that he’s written up underneath the pictures. “I also found a _lot_ of very well hidden, but seemingly very _deep_ ties between him and this super secret Russian gang.” His gaze is steady when Bucky glances up at his face. “This super secret Russian gang that I’ve heard of before.”

Confronted with the evidence, Bucky doesn’t speak. Can’t, yet. But Steve is so _kind_.

“Nat wasn’t willing to tell me much,” he tells Bucky softly. “She’s very protective of you, it turns out. But I got one or two details out of her, and put two and two together.”

To be perfectly honest, Bucky is _very_ impressed with Steve’s work, despite himself. Steve, it seems, can tell.

“I’m good at my job,” he says, on Bucky’s expression.

“Evidently,” Bucky agrees, glancing over the report. It’s incredibly detailed, given how much of Hydra is still _very_ much a secret. It’s good.

They’re both silent for a moment. Until Steve breaks it once again.

“He threatened you, didn’t he?”

“What makes you think that?” Bucky shoots back, looking up at Steve, defiant. Suddenly _angry_ for no reason at all. “You figured out I was a part of it, why do you think I’m _at all_ an innocent party here?”

But Steve just shrugs, unbothered. “Because I know who you are,” he says simply. Confidently, like he really just _knows_.

And that’s what does it. That’s what breaks Bucky’s resolve once and for all. He takes a deep breath, and sighs out all pretense, closing the file and pushing it toward Steve.

“He threatened _you_ , actually,” he confesses.

Steve frowns in confusion, cocking his head a little and managing to look like an inquisitive golden retriever.

“Well,” Bucky adds as an afterthought, “me too. He wants to take me back,” he tells Steve. “To Russia. To the ‘family.’ I wasn’t exactly in Russia voluntarily to begin with, and...Brock and I have a history I don’t like reliving. It’s a long story. But I know their secrets, and I like to think that if I could escape them once, I could do it again. But he told me he was gonna kill you. And I just...I couldn’t risk that.”

“I can take pretty good care of myself,” Steve says, but Bucky shakes his head.

“You don’t know Hydra,” he replies firmly. “They’re brutal, ruthless, and efficient. They’d find a way to get to you, and I _cannot_ let that happen.”

Bucky laughs mirthlessly, and finally says aloud what he’s been thinking since Rumlow cornered him in that alley. “So now they have their trump card back, and once again, they control my life. But honestly? I’ll take it, because they don’t have you.” He feels his eyes burn and his voice break as he says, “They _can’t_ have you.”

“Buck,” Steve breathes, but Bucky cuts him off.

“No, baby, I _have_ to keep you safe.” Tears are starting to prick at his eyes, and he doesn’t have control over what he’s saying anymore. “Even though that means I lose you, I _have_ to, you _have_ to be safe.”

“Bucky—” Steve starts again, filled to the brim with goodness, but Bucky cuts him off again, tears spilling over onto his face now, fully crying as he babbles.

“Steve, _please_ , I can’t— They can’t—”

Slowly, Steve walks toward Bucky, reaching out to him. And Bucky doesn’t resist when Steve takes hold of his arms, and gently pulls him in. He lets Steve wrap around him, and tucks himself into Steve’s big, strong warmth, burying his face in the crook of his neck, and breathing him in. Steve smells clean and warm, like fresh laundry and tea. Bucky has missed his smell, his touch, so fucking much.

One of Steve’s big hands comes to rest comfortingly on the back of Bucky’s head while Bucky cries into his neck. He turns his face into Bucky’s a little, shushing him soothingly. His beard feels as soft as it looks when it brushes Bucky’s cheek as Steve murmurs small comforts. Bucky feels himself turning his face further towards Steve’s, too, until — very, very slowly, so slowly it feels like dreaming — their lips meet.

Six weeks apart, and this is like coming up for air. Bucky clutches at Steve without thinking, pulling him closer and closer as Steve runs his tongue over Bucky’s, kissing him as deeply and passionately as he can. Until Bucky’s mind catches up with him, and he realizes what he’s doing, and breaks away, muttering, “I can’t.”

“Buck,” Steve tries to reason with him as Bucky presses a trembling hand to his mouth, his own lips red and shining from Bucky’s tongue, “I can help you get out of this, I have resources.”

“So does Brock Rumlow,” Bucky spits. “He’s a _cop_ , he has way more resources than I can imagine you do, Steve.”

“I don’t give a _fuck_ about Brock Rumlow and his resources,” Steve tells him firmly, righteously zealous in this. “I will get you out of this. Just tell me what’s going on, okay?” he pleads. “Tell me about what happened to you.”

Bucky laughs bitterly. “It’s a really long story.”

“I got time, baby,” Steve breathes. “For you, I have forever.”

“You don’t mean that,” Bucky says.

“I _do_ , sweetheart.”

“No, you don’t _get_ _it_ , Steve,” Bucky presses, raising his voice, almost yelling now, “this isn’t just some city gang, it runs _deep_. This group was created by the KGB, and has been passed through every Russian counterintelligence agency since. They act outside of any law, and they never have to fear the consequences, because their country looks the other way. It’s not something you can just... _punch!_ ”

Steve frowns. “Punch?”

“I don’t know what your plan is,” Bucky tells him, waving a hand vaguely.

“So you just assume my plan includes going to Russia to _punch_ an entire organized crime syndicate?”

“I’m not a mind reader!” Bucky argues, and Steve laughs. Bucky has missed that laugh. It pulls at his heart like the tides.

“Buck,” Steve says gently. “If you really want me to go, I’ll go. Threats on my person aside, if you tell me you don’t want me, I promise I will leave you alone for the rest of our lives.” He wets his lips, pausing, then breathes, “But I don’t think that’s what you want.”

Bucky is shaking. Not just his hands, every part of him is trembling with this.

“It’s not,” he whispers, too honest. “It’s not what I _want._ But I—”

“Then fuck them,” Steve interrupts, all passion and fire. “I want _you_ , Buck. I don’t fucking _care_ what comes with it. Whatever it is, we’ll figure it out together. I want to be with _you_.”

“Steve,” Bucky breathes.

“Do you want to be with me?”

“ _Yes_ , but—”

“Then come with me,” Steve says.

What?

“Where?” Bucky asks, suddenly completely lost in this conversation.

But: “Anywhere,” Steve answers. “I don’t care. Pick somewhere, we’ll go there. I will run away with you _tonight_ if it means I get to be with you.”

Bucky sucks in a breath, his eyes going huge. _What?_

“Let’s go,” Steve continues insistently, “let’s find somewhere that no one will know you, and we’ll start again _together_. We’ll live together, I’ll protect you. If that’s what we need to do, that’s what we’ll do, I’m ready!”

“But your job—” Bucky starts.

“I don’t care,” Steve cuts him off.

“Your home, your friends—!”

“I don’t care! We’ll figure it out later, but right now, let’s just _go!_ ”

“Steve!” Bucky cries, and Steve stops, attentive.

“Steve,” Bucky says again, softer, desperate, his name an inchoate prayer, “you deserve…so much better than me. I’m not worth all this.”

“You are to me,” Steve tells him immediately, and he says it with such _conviction_ , fuck. “God, baby, you’re worth _so much more_ than this. This is nothing compared to what I’d do for you.”

Bucky casts around for something to say, something to ask, that would make any of this make sense at all.

What he settles on, in the end, is: “Why?”

Steve sighs. He fixes Bucky with this _look_. This helpless, hopeful look.

“I’m...in love with you, honey,” he confesses simply, shrugging like it’s not complicated at all. “I’m _so_ in love with you.”

Well. _Fuck_.

Bucky just breathes for a second, wide-eyed and trembling. All this time, he’s been trying to protect Steve — to protect himself. And here Steve is, laying himself completely bare in front of a man who’s already broken his heart. Who could do it again right now. But Steve doesn’t care. He’s just here. He just _loves_. Steve is willing to face death and worse for _Bucky_.

He thinks Bucky is worth that.

All at once, something in Bucky, some guard he’s managed to keep up his whole life, finally falls. Shatters.

Instantly, he’s crossed the kitchen straight to Steve, slamming their mouths together and kissing Steve _hard_. Steve responds immediately and thoroughly, kissing Bucky back with such deep, desperate tenderness that Bucky is overwhelmed with it, emboldened by it.

Bucky lets go of Steve to pull his own shirt off over his head, and Steve follows his lead immediately, grabbing hold of Bucky’s face to lock lips with him again before the shirts even hit the floor. And then he’s opening Bucky’s fly, and yanking down his jeans, while Bucky kicks off his shoes, then pulls Steve’s lower lip between his teeth — basking in the softness of that beard against his face — and bites down, eliciting a beautiful moan from Steve’s obscene mouth. Bucky manages to get Steve’s jeans open and pushed down enough for Steve to step out of them with his shoes by the time Steve’s slipped Bucky’s boxer briefs down around his ankles, but that’s as far as he can get before Steve lifts him up off the ground like _nothing,_ and sets him, fully naked, on the kitchen counter.

Bucky whines a protest when Steve moves away from kissing his mouth, but Steve just grins at him briefly before scooping an arm under Bucky’s left knee, and shifting and bending until that leg is draped over his broad shoulder. And then Steve opens his mouth, and runs his tongue up the underside of Bucky’s cock, before swallowing him entirely to the hilt, and Bucky’s vision whites out for a second.

“ _Fucking Christ!_ ” Bucky gasps out as Steve’s head bobs over his cock, lips tight around his shaft as his tongue licks at the head. “God-Christing-damnit, Rogers, your _mouth!_ ”

Steve hums a chuckle around Bucky’s cock — which makes Bucky let out another string of swears as he arches back into his cabinets at the vibration — before he pops off long enough to say, “Why d’you think I’ve been trying to do this since we first made out on my couch?”

“I thought you just— _hnngh_ —liked it!” Bucky pants as Steve gets back to work, the damned beard tickling deliciously at his bare thighs. “Didn’t realize you were tryna show off— _fuck!_ ”

Steve’s mouth is ridiculous. It’s absurd. It’s _obscene_.

“Don’t mind so much about showin’ off,” Steve murmurs, lifting off again to thumb at the head of Bucky’s cock, swirling around the mixture of Bucky’s precome and Steve’s saliva in a way that makes Bucky want to happily die. “Just want to make you feel good, Buck.”

“That is—” Bucky starts, then gasps loudly as Steve swallows him again, “—a load of horseshit— _uhughh!_ ” Steve mumbles another laugh around him, _holy Jesus fuck_. “But you’re doin’ good on that front, pal,” Bucky finishes, leaning his head further back on the cabinet behind him, and trying like hell to _breathe_. “ _Fuck_ , I’m close—”

Steve hums approvingly, reaching into his underwear to stroke his own rock-hard erection — fast and hard like he _needs_ it, like he’s been holding back this whole time, and he can’t anymore — and moans around Bucky’s cock, which pulls Bucky right to the edge. And then Steve swirls his tongue around Bucky’s head, and _sucks,_ and Bucky is spasming and gasping as he comes down Steve’s beautiful throat.

Steve moans loudly, swallowing around Bucky. Then his eyes roll back, and he comes, too.

Bucky slumps against the cabinets. Steve pulls up off of him, and stretches up to kiss him, soft and sweet. Bucky sighs into Steve’s mouth, and Steve brushes his thumb across Bucky’s cheek.

After a few moments of gently pressing their lips together again and again, Bucky leans his forehead against Steve’s. Silently, Steve takes hold of his hips, and helps him down from the counter, then cradles Bucky’s face in his hands, and tilts up to press a tickling kiss to his forehead.

“So,” Steve murmurs against Bucky’s forehead as Bucky tries to stay upright on wobbly legs. “Are we back together?” He leans back to look at Bucky pleadingly, stroking his hands down Bucky’s neck and across his bare shoulders. “Please say we are, I _hate_ being broken up with you.”

A small smile tugs at the corners of Bucky’s mouth as he nods. “Yeah, Steve,” he says softly. “We’re back together. If you forgive me, that is. I missed you so fucking much, baby.”

“There’s nothing to forgive, sweetheart,” Steve insists, brushing their noses together. “I missed you like _hell_. I’ve been fuckin’ miserable without you.”

Bucky closes his eyes as Steve kisses the corner of his mouth, big, warm hands reaching up to tenderly cradle his face again.

“Steve,” he mumbles. Steve hums in response, looking at him with soft, sweet eyes. Bucky takes in a deep, steadying breath, and then, on the out breath, soughs, “I love you.”

Steve’s face lights up into a look of pure, awed joy, his eyes shining. “You do, huh?” he whispers.

“Yeah,” Bucky confirms, grinning up at Steve as he circles his fingers around Steve’s wrist. “I do.”

Steve’s face breaks into a sunshine smile. “Well, ain’t that somethin’,” he breathes, then leans in to kiss Bucky again. “Will you tell me again?” he asks against Bucky’s lips.

Bucky feels so damn soft as he gazes, smiling, into Steve’s gorgeous blue eyes. “I love you, Steve Rogers.”

“Mmm,” Steve hums happily, ducking to press his lips — and his _soft fucking beard_ — to Bucky’s neck.

“I love you so fucking much,” Bucky continues. Now that he’s said it, he never wants to stop.

Steve moans, and moves to the other side of Bucky’s neck.

“I’m so _desperately_ in love with you, Steve,” Bucky confesses, honest, and shivers at the gust of air Steve sighs hot against his skin.

“ _God,_ ” Steve groans. He pulls back, and stares at Bucky, his pupils all blown out, and Bucky can feel an urgent pressing through one thin layer of fabric against his upper thigh. Steve is hard again.

Suddenly, Steve dips down, and scoops Bucky up, hoisting him into his arms. Bucky can feel his own erection growing again already at the action — like he’s a fucking _teenager_ , Jesus — and he wraps his legs around Steve’s waist as he’s carried through his living room and into his bedroom.

Bucky huffs as his back hits the mattress, and Steve quickly sheds his underwear and climbs in over him, kissing and biting his way up Bucky’s body, thighs to hips to stomach to chest, leaving hot, wet marks and pink beard scuffs all over him.

“Can I fuck you?” Steve whispers once he gets up to Bucky’s mouth, rocking his hips down against Bucky’s while Bucky writhes beneath his weight and _moans_.

“I’m gonna be real mad if you don’t,” he replies, and Steve laughs breathlessly.

He keeps rocking his hips, and Bucky lets out another string of creative profanity that makes Steve laugh again. God, that _laugh_. Like music in Bucky’s ears, joyous and soothing and _perfect_. Then Steve starts biting and licking Bucky’s neck, as he reaches around and squeezes and kneads his ass.

“Wait, hang on,” Bucky gasps, pushing at Steve, and Steve immediately backs off, tensed muscles and panicked look on his face, all but totally releasing him. “Oh, no, no,” Bucky amends quickly, chasing him up, and pulling him back to kiss against his face. “I just —” he starts again softly, murmuring into Steve’s skin, “I want to see your cock.”

Steve pauses for a second, letting that sink in, before chuckling again. “Oh, I _see_ ,” he drawls, slow, pushing Bucky all the way back down again before he rolls off of him and onto the other side of the bed. “Go on, then, have a look,” Steve says invitingly, lying back with his arms behind his head, stretched out long and leisurely. “Can even touch it, if the spirit moves you,” he adds with a catlike grin.

Bucky laughs, short. “Oh, _can_ I?” he asks sarcastically. But he’s already shifting forward, and reaching out to ghost his fingers over Steve’s thick, gorgeous cock.

It’s absolutely absurd, Bucky thinks as he circles his hand around it, and Steve lets out a soft exhale. It’s _exceptional,_ and it’s...well, it’s proportional to the rest of Steve’s gigantic body. Velvety soft and _freckled_ , Jesus, it leans just a little to the left, the dark pink head stretching out of the foreskin and leaking precum. Bucky bets it must taste swell, and here he is, so close to it.

He gently pulls back the foreskin and licks the head, smiling as Steve hisses a gasp at the touch of his tongue. He _does_ taste good. He tastes _amazing._ Bucky keeps licking, wraps his lips gently around Steve’s head and laps at it, until a hand slips into his hair and fists there hard enough to drag Bucky off of his cock and up, so Steve can meet him, and kiss him rough.

Bucky lets out a loud moan that Steve swallows, and then all of a sudden, Steve has a tight hold on him, rolling them over, and pinning Bucky down with his weight, grabbing Bucky by the wrists and pulling them up, over his head, pinning him there, too. And then Steve’s other hand slides down Bucky’s chest, his stomach, his cock, cups his balls and keeps going, slipping between his cheeks and gently rubbing at his entrance as Bucky gasps, and arches up against Steve’s body.

“Where’s your lube?” Steve murmurs in a low rumble, nuzzling at Bucky’s pulse point, beard scratching at his throat, and this is far and away the best thing that has _ever_ happened to Bucky.

He’s not even coherent anymore with the way Steve’s finger pads are pressing against his hole, just this side of gentle now. All he can do is gasp out, “Nightstand.”

But that seems to do the trick. The fingers disappear from him to reach across them both, pull open his nightstand drawer and rifle inside, Steve’s left hand still pressing both of Bucky’s wrists into the pillows over his head.

“ _God_ , you’re beautiful,” Steve breathes against Bucky’s mouth, clicking the bottle of lube open, and managing to squeeze some out onto his fingers one-handed. Then Bucky feels those fingers return, cool and slick now, to circle his rim insistently, and he can’t help the moan that escapes him as Steve’s weight keeps him from arching the way his body wants to. The light fuzz that Steve’s chest hair used to be has somehow, in the time they’ve been apart, grown into a lush, dark covering of body hair over his chest and stomach, moving over Bucky’s, and it’s good, it’s _so_ damn good.

But Steve is still talking, murmuring, “Every time I look at you, I’m struck by how fucking _gorgeous_ you are. And I keep thinking I’ve seen all of you, but then you fucking arch your back like that when I’m sucking you or touching you, or you cry while you tell me about how you’ll do anything to keep me safe, and I suddenly realize there’s so much more of your beauty that I haven’t even _seen_ yet.”

Bucky groans gutturally as Steve slips one finger inside him, the ring of muscle yielding to Steve’s control as Steve babbles off this _praise_ for him. He’s never done anything to deserve something this good, and he knows it. He _knows_ it, and yet here’s Steve, trying like hell to prove him wrong.

“Fuck, you feel good,” Steve continues breathlessly, working his finger in and out, and twisting his wrist, stretching Bucky open, and learning his body. “Baby, you feel so fucking good, I can’t believe how perfect you are. And don’t tell me you’re not, because I know the truth. ’S like you were made just for me, honey. Every fucking time I look at you, I fall more in love with you, do you know that? Every single time. That’s it, honey, come on, I’ve got you,” he adds as Bucky moans out his name when he adds a second finger. “Oh, sweetheart, I’m gonna fuck you so damn good. I’m gonna make you feel so good, honey, I promise. There it is, there you go.” He’s found Bucky’s prostate and is crooking his fingers, rubbing at that sweet spot relentlessly, while Bucky squirms, and makes a sound like a gasping sob. “ _Fuck_ ,” Steve hisses. Bucky couldn’t agree more.

Steve presses hot, deliciously scratchy kisses into Bucky’s neck and shoulder as he adds a third finger, while Bucky tries to just _breathe,_ it feels so good.

“You almost ready for me?” Steve murmurs between soft kisses to the hollow of Bucky’s throat.

Bucky nods. “Yes,” he gasps out ineloquently before his mouth drops open in pleasure again. Steve hums a pleased sound, and pulls his fingers out to reposition himself between Bucky’s legs.

He reaches back in the nightstand drawer for a condom, then rips the wrapper open with his teeth and rolls the condom on his cock, still without releasing Bucky’s pinned arms. And then Steve gets his other hand under Bucky’s knee, and folds his leg up, lining up with his hole.

The slow push of Steve’s cock inside him stretches him even further, and lights up nerve endings Bucky didn’t even know he _had._ Steve’s cock is definitely the biggest he’s ever taken, and holy _hell_ does it feel good. He drops his head back, moaning again, and _loudly_ , while Steve slowly and steadily pushes in all the way to the hilt, and bites at the corded muscle of Bucky’s neck.

“Good?” he asks Bucky breathlessly. Bucky can’t do anything but moan again, and nod.

It’s _so_ good. It’s _incredibly_ good _._ Bucky has never felt anything in his _life_ as good as Steve goddamn Rogers’ cock inside him.

And then Steve starts to move, and it’s even _better_.

Steve’s initial slow, shallow thrusts quickly begin to accelerate and deepen when Bucky wraps his legs around him and pulls him even further in. He reaches up to hold Bucky’s wrists with both hands now, then slides them up even more, until all of their fingers are laced together.

Steve’s thrusts start to get rougher, and Bucky’s _ah, ah, ah_ noises rise higher and higher in pitch. Then Steve kisses Bucky’s slack mouth and bites down on his lip, and Bucky has absolutely no control. He shakes violently as Steve fucks him through his orgasm.

He’s still trembling through the aftershocks when Steve groans, his whole body clenching as he comes, too.

They lie there a minute, just catching their breath, their hands gone loose, but still holding on to each other, and Bucky feels that swell of love for Steve that he’s becoming used to being overwhelmed by. He’s been so _fucking_ unhappy for far too long, but in this moment, right now, he’s not sure if he’s ever been happier.

Eventually, and too soon, Steve pulls out, and rolls heavily off of him.

“I’ll get you a washcloth,” he mumbles, giggling tiredly, but Bucky reaches out to hold onto him before he can get up.

“Just wait a second,” Bucky whispers, pulling weakly at him. But Steve comes right back to him anyway, wrapping his arms around Bucky, and gathering him in until his head rests on Steve’s chest, while Steve gently strokes sweat-soaked hair off of his forehead.

“Thank you,” Bucky mumbles, his eyes closed.

Steve chuckles. “For what, the sex?” he asks. “Because, honestly, babe, I should be thanking _you_.”

Bucky laughs, and noses at Steve’s chest. “No, dummy,” he drawls sleepily. “Thank you for barreling in here, all righteous fury, and trying to fix things. Thank you for putting up with my bullshit, and for not letting me ruin this over it.” He pauses, blinking, then finishes softly, “Thank you for loving me anyway.”

For a second, Bucky isn’t totally sure that Steve is even still awake. He’s very quiet, so it seems like maybe he just fell asleep in the middle of that. But then lips press into his hair, right at the top of his head, and Steve’s voice tells him, “Loving you isn’t hard, Buck. Sometimes it feels like loving you is the only thing I _can_ do. I can’t _not_ love you. I know, I’ve tried.”

“I’m sorry,” Bucky whispers, but Steve shifts, cradling Bucky’s jaw, and lifting his chin so he has to look up into dazzling blue eyes.

“Don’t,” Steve tells him firmly. “I understand why you did what you did now. In your place, I would have done the same. Please don’t be sorry for trying to protect me.”

Bucky takes a breath. He nods. “I love you.”

Steve’s smile is so, so soft. “Run away with me.”

“Okay.”

Steve raises his eyebrows. “Really?”

“I want to,” Bucky says, then sighs. “We can’t.”

“Why not?” Steve challenges, rolling onto his side so he and Bucky can talk face to face.

“You can’t just drop your job and disappear, someone will definitely miss you,” Bucky begins to list on his fingers. “I have patients, and sessions, and groups scheduled for the next six weeks, and I can’t just bail on them without warning or a contingency plan. You have a roommate who would be really fucked over if you just moved out all of a sudden. I have RJ.” He raises an eyebrow. “There’s more, but I think that’s enough on its own.”

Steve purses his lips and frowns. “I guess you’re right,” he admits reluctantly. Then he takes Bucky’s hands in his. “So, what are we gonna do?” he asks. “I love you so much, Buck, I want to be with you more than anything else in the whole world. I’d do anything for you, absolutely anything.”

Jesus fuck. That’s not a sentiment Bucky is used to having directed at him. It strikes at his chest, and he thinks if he weren’t lying down right now, he’d be physically blown back by it.

He reaches up with their joined hands, and strokes his natural thumb across Steve’s cheekbone, above the gingery golden-brown of his pretty new beard.

“I don’t know,” Bucky whispers, a confession. “I don’t know what we do. I’m not gonna push you away again, I don’t have the willpower.”

Steve huffs a small, sad laugh, opening his hand to press Bucky’s palm to his face. Bucky scritches his fingers against his beard in response.

“Anything at all,” Steve promises again.

“I don’t know,” Bucky repeats. “All I know is Hydra and Crossbones _can’t_ know that we’re back together.”

Steve nods. “Okay,” he breathes, “how about this: it’s getting late, and I don’t think you’ve eaten. Plus, we’re both exhausted from all the emotions, and stress, and emotions, and sex—”

“And emotions,” Bucky adds helpfully.

“And emotions,” Steve agrees, grinning. “We’re not gonna figure this out exhausted, with low blood sugar. Let’s wash up, then get you some dinner and some sleep, and we can reconvene in the morning, okay?”

Bucky smiles. Steve is far, far too good for him, but he’ll absolutely take what he’s given. “Okay,” he agrees. Then, softer, “Will you stay over tonight?”

“Honey,” Steve tells him, his expression and his voice dripping with adoration, “I’d stay forever if you asked me to.”

🎈

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **Next time:**   
> 


	10. Ten: November 18th

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> From this point on, please assume that every chapter may contain at least mentions of any warning tag, including this one! As always, feel free to ask about anything you have concerns about, here or [on twitter](https://twitter.com/apblaidd), and I will warn in the notes for the more hardcore moments when we get there.

Bucky lets another person take care of him for once in his life, lying back and allowing Steve to go get a warm washcloth and clean him up; then, when Steve insists, directing him where to find sweatpants for both of them to wear. And _then_ , once they’re both comfy, Steve takes Bucky out into his own kitchen, and starts rummaging through his fridge, yelling every time Bucky tries to stand up from the kitchen table and help.

“I just feel like this would be a lot easier if I helped,” Bucky laughs after the third time Steve has wordlessly yelled in his direction. “You know, since it’s _my_ kitchen, and you’ve never even looked inside my refrigerator before literally twenty seconds ago.”

“Nope!” Steve cries cheerfully, finally emerging from the fridge with several tupperware containers stacked on top of each other. “Did you cook all of these?”

“Yeah,” Bucky replies, “why?”

“You cook a lot?”

“I cook— What?” Bucky asks, laughing again. “I cook a normal amount!”

He’s giddy. Steve is here. Steve loves him. Steve wants to _be_ with him — even after… _everything_ — to the point of offering to run away with him, just like that. And Steve just gave him two separate orgasms in one hour. All in all, Bucky’s riding a high at the moment, and he can’t say he’s too eager to come down from it.

Steve cracks open one of the tupperwares. “Damn, what is this?” he asks, impressed.

“I think that one’s just penne,” Bucky answers, bewildered at how much credit Steve is giving him for something as basic as feeding himself.

“It’s penne with mushrooms, and chicken, and some kind of creamy sauce, though,” Steve says. “This looks amazing. You made this?”

Bucky laughs again. “Yes!” he cries. “Why do you sound so impressed by that?”

“Because you _cook!_ ” Steve cries back. “And I didn’t know! Do you cook every day?”

“Just about,” Bucky answers. “I feed myself, and that impresses you?”

“ _I_ feed myself, but I don’t cook like this,” Steve argues. “I live off of takeout, cereal, and extremely utilitarian grilled chicken, but _you—_ ”

“I’m thirty-five!” Bucky cackles. “I cook for myself, what’s the big _deal?_ ”

“What are you trying to say about me?” Steve asks, a teasing smirk lifting the corners of his mouth. “I’m only a year younger than you. And the big _deal_ is that you’re fucking amazing, pal.” Steve’s face softens as he says it, and he looks at Bucky with a kind of wonder that hits Bucky full in his chest. “You’re absolutely goddamn amazing. What are you doing?”

What Bucky is doing is standing up so he can cross to Steve as quickly as he can, grab him by his beardy face, and kiss him deeply. Steve hums into the kiss, abandoning the tupperware for a moment to wrap both arms around Bucky’s waist, one hand pressed into Bucky’s bare back, holding them tight together.

“I love you,” Bucky murmurs into Steve’s mouth. He can’t help it.

Steve smiles against Bucky’s lips as Bucky strokes his thumbs over Steve’s cheeks, skin to beard and back. “I love you, too,” he whispers. His breath warms Bucky’s smile.

When they finally part, after a long moment just holding each other like that, Bucky doesn’t go back to the table, instead plastering himself against Steve’s back as he goes back to investigating the other containers. Bucky hooks his chin over Steve’s shoulder, and begins to identify each dish that Steve uncovers.

“Roasted potatoes. Chicken and rice. That’s old, throw that out.”

Steve chuckles, and does as he’s told, tipping the container upside down over the trash can, then rinsing it and putting it in the dishwasher, because he’s truly the man of Bucky’s dreams.

In the end, Steve nukes all three of the surviving leftovers in the microwave, then dishes them out in equal portions onto two plates. He makes Bucky go sit back at the kitchen table so that he can make a show out of serving him his plate, and he won’t even let Bucky get them some waters, insisting on doing that, too.

“I’m your man, now,” Steve tells him solemnly as he hands Bucky a fork, and sits down at the table with him. “I get to take care of you, okay?”

“Fine,” Bucky huffs, but he can feel the pleased flush in his cheeks that surely gives him away.

Steve’s knee finds Bucky’s under the table and stays there.

They make some light small talk as they eat, mostly just enjoying each other’s company after so long apart, and the food that Bucky made himself over the last few days. When Bucky is finished eating, Steve asks him four times if he’s full. It takes four times of Bucky stressing that yes, he’s good, he can’t eat anything else, and then for Bucky to press a giggling kiss to Steve’s mouth just to shut him up, for Steve to be finally fully convinced. And that’s when Bucky pulls Steve into his living room so he’ll cuddle with him on the couch.

They settle into it, with Steve stretched out diagonally across the sofa, his bare feet propped up on the coffee table, and Bucky tucked into the space behind him, curled under Steve’s arm while Steve threads his fingers through Bucky’s long hair.

“Hey,” Steve says after a comfortable silence long enough that Bucky had started to happily drift off.

“Hmm?” Bucky responds, coming out of his light drowse to try to be attentive and listen.

“Now,” Steve begins carefully, and Bucky rouses himself even further, because this sounds like serious talk, “I know this may not be the ideal setting for this, but I don’t know that there _is_ an ideal setting.” He pauses, breathing into Bucky’s hairline, then asks, “Will you tell me what happened? What they did to you?”

Bucky hesitates. He’s still afraid that when Steve hears the full story — when he hears about the terrible things Bucky has actually _done_ — that he’ll change his mind. But this is part of the deal. He should have told Steve months ago, when he could tell things were already heading toward becoming serious between them. He has to tell him now. But he hesitates.

“It’s okay, honey,” Steve whispers into his hair, clearly understanding his internal struggle.

“They didn’t just do things to me,” Bucky says quietly. “I did things, too.”

But Steve nods. “I know,” he says. “Sweetheart, I love you. No matter what you tell me about your past, that’s not gonna change.”

Bucky sits up a little to look down at Steve’s face, nothing but honesty written across it. “You sure?” he asks shakily, and he hates how much he needs to know this. “It’s bad.”

Steve grimaces, but not unkindly. “Natasha told me some dark stuff about her involvement,” he admits. “She deals with guilt about it every day. I don’t blame her the way she does, though. It sounds like quite a lot of what she did, she was forced, coerced, or manipulated to do. And besides, she’s not who she was then. She made the choice to leave. That says a lot about her. Says a lot about you, too,” Steve adds, reaching up to stroke a lock of hair out of Bucky’s face and tuck it behind his ear.

Bucky takes a shaky breath. Steve tugs on him gently, so he tucks himself back under Steve’s arm, and begins.

“All right,” he starts, steeling himself. “Well, first of all, Barnes isn’t my given surname.”

“No?” Steve asks, but he doesn’t sound too terribly surprised by this revelation.

“I was born James Buchanan Zimaev, here in Brooklyn,” Bucky confirms, nodding. “My family is Russian, and my father’s parents were involved in the founding of Hydra back in the day. Dad was forced into it at an early age, I think he was twelve or thirteen. He hated it, got out as soon as he could, and fled to New York, where he met my mom.”

Steve is quiet, just letting Bucky talk, and as he gets into the story, the telling becomes a little easier.

“They were both really dedicated to trying to take Hydra down, which is actually where they met T’Challa’s father, T’Chaka. Uncle T’Chaka had people deep undercover in Hydra at the time, and was on the way to taking it down from the inside when my parents got involved. What?”

Steve is softly chucking. “Nothing,” he says, shaking his head. “You call one of the most powerful men of his time, ‘Uncle T’Chaka.’”

“Shut up,” Bucky protests, but he laughs despite himself. “That’s who he was to me! It slipped out!”

“No, no, I’m sorry, go on.”

“ _Anyway_ ,” Bucky continues pointedly. “ _Uncle_ T’Chaka thought my dad could be invaluable to the cause, given his familial ties, and my dad was willing to go back in, despite how fucking awful it is, if it meant having a chance at ending Hydra for good. But right when he started, he knew something was off. He realized it was a trap. T’Chaka’s guys got Dad smuggled out of the country before Hydra executed him, thankfully, but he and Mom and I had to seek asylum in Wakanda. Otherwise all three of us would have been hunted down and killed.”

Steve lets out a heavy breath at the thought, careful not to interrupt.

“I was about three at that point,” Bucky says, “and my mom was pregnant with my little sister. The Wakandan royal family welcomed us in — which was _unheard of_ at the time in Wakanda, they used to be very insular, very, very protective of their home and their people, with good reason. But they showed us _incredible_ kindness. My parents and my sister still live there, in fact.”

Bucky glances up to see Steve’s thoughtful frown.

“So, you were living in Wakanda as a kid,” Steve says, trying to work it out. “Then—how did you end up involved with Hydra?”

Bucky lets out a little ‘ _you’re not even ready for what’s coming’_ huff, and continues. “Well,” he says, “I’m sure you’ve heard that Wakanda is unmatched in terms of security.”

“I have,” Steve confirms.

“This’ll give you an idea of how powerful Hydra is, then: when I was fifteen, I was asleep in our house in the Wakandan capitol, barely a hundred meters from the palace itself, and some guys from Hydra somehow managed to get into my room, and kidnap me from under my parents’ noses.”

A short, sharp gasp is the only noise Steve makes for a moment. Then, he just breathes, “Fuck.”

“Yeah,” Bucky agrees darkly. “Turns out Gramps was real sore that Dad got away from him and then bit his thumb at the whole organization, and I guess getting me into it, willing or not, was his way at getting back at my pops.”

“Holy _hell_.”

Bucky nods. “So, I’m fifteen, and _staunchly_ against everything Hydra so violently stands for, living with my loving parents and little sister, with the crown prince of Wakanda as my best friend slash surrogate brother, and then suddenly I wake up, and I’m bound, gagged, and drugged within an inch of my life, in a cold fucking country I’ve never even been to.”

The memory flashes through his mind like he’s there again — one of the few that hasn’t been fogged by drugs, trauma, and time. Startling awake at a rush of icy water poured over him, struggling to move, and realizing his hands were bound behind his back, a gag shoved into his dry, parched mouth. So horribly afraid and confused, his head ringing as his body registered the sharp ache of having been beaten while he was out. Blood matted in his hair. The stab through his heart at the realization of just how _fucking bad_ his situation was, as deep voices taunted him in a language he didn’t yet understand. And then just the overpowering darkness of a fear so intense, he’s never really been able to shake it since.

“Drugged?” Steve asks softly, like dread, cutting through the memory. Bucky shakes his head to clear it.

“Yeah,” he confirms, “they had me on a constantly-rotating cocktail the whole time I was there, but they kept me on heroin a lot of the time.” This part is the least of it, honestly, he’s barely gotten started. “Just long enough that withdrawals were gonna be fucking _hell_ , and then they’d drop it for a while.”

“Jesus, Buck,” Steve breathes, so quietly. Bucky pulls out from under his arm to look clearly at his face, already pale and haunted, and he’s barely scratched the surface.

“Do you still want to know all this?” Bucky asks Steve seriously. He’s ready for the answer to be no. He’s never told anyone except his therapist this much already. His family didn’t need to hear about what’s coming next, and if Steve doesn’t want to, Bucky can shield him from it, too.

But: “Yeah,” Steve answers, shifting to face Bucky, too. “It’s just...hard to hear. I _hate_ that they did that to you.”

Bucky nods. He understands, he really does. “It was pretty hard to live through, too.”

The two of them have turned in toward each other, sitting up straighter now, and they’ve unconsciously become one another’s mirror. Outside legs braced on the floor, inside legs bent at the knee and pressed against each other shin to shin, hands clasped between them.

“Go on, sweetheart,” Steve tells Bucky, squeezing his hands supportively. “I love you so much.”

Bucky smiles. “I love you, too,” he whispers, and he does. God help him, he does.

Steve leans forward, and Bucky’s eyes flutter closed as Steve presses one small kiss to his forehead before settling back to listen again.

“Right,” Bucky murmurs, opening his eyes and finding his place, “so anyway. I still don’t remember much of the next year or so. I was super drugged a _lot_ of the time. What I do remember is mostly just a lot of brainwashing and...,” he pauses, but Steve asked him to continue. “Well, a lot of...torture.”

“Christ,” Steve whispers. Bucky doesn’t think he actually meant to say it out loud, that’s how soft it comes out.

“I think I was probably around seventeen when they finally brought me enough off the drugs that I was mostly conscious most of the time,” Bucky tells him, bracing to tell the next part of the story. “That’s when Brock Rumlow entered my life.”

He watches Steve’s brows, pulled up in the middle this whole time, sink slowly into a deep frown. “Why do I have a feeling this story is about to get so much worse?” he asks.

“Because it is,” Bucky answers grimly, trying to let the ocean blue of Steve’s eyes ground him through the memories he’s about to get into.

Then, because there’s no preamble that will make any of this any better, he just launches into it.

“They were starting to give me a longer leash,” he begins. “I wasn’t living in a cell, chained up every night anymore, so they sent Brock in to make sure I always remembered who I belonged to. I didn’t even know his _name_ for—god, I don’t know how long. I just knew him by his code name. Crossbones.”

Bucky grimaces at the feel of the word in his mouth, like poison. Like the barrel of a gun. Metallic, and violent.

“He convinced me for a long time that we were in a relationship.” The word spits through Bucky’s teeth with the kind of vitriol he wasn’t even sure he still had. _Relationship_. It’s been more than thirteen years, and the damage that man did to Bucky’s ability to love and be loved inside of a real, healthy relationship still remains. Still hurts. “That he _loved_ me. That I loved _him_.”

Steve must sense the thunderstorm brewing inside Bucky’s head, because he squeezes his hands again, hard enough to remind Bucky that he’s still there. Hard enough to remind Bucky what being truly loved feels like.

Bucky takes a deep breath, and Steve waits for him to finish. The ocean in his eyes ebbs and flows, and Bucky can breathe again.

He continues.

“I figured he must be right. My brain was so scrambled, I didn’t know up from down at that point. But it was...it was _dark_.” To put it mildly. It was hell on earth. It made Bucky welcome the days Crossbones was angry enough to beat the living shit out of him, because maybe one of those days would finally bring him death and an escape. But he can’t bring himself to say any of that out loud, so ‘dark,’ laughably understated as it is, will have to do.

“I never got a say in when or how we had sex,” Bucky hears himself say, as though observing his own speech patterns, and oh, he must be dissociating a little now. “He just...well, he raped me whenever he felt like it. I actually can’t remember ever _wanting_ to have sex with him. And it wasn’t gentle, or anything even remotely close to it. It hurt pretty much every time, so why _would_ I want it? And he would bring other people back to our place pretty regularly, and fuck them in front of me, so I knew he didn’t have to answer to me. Of course, _I_ wasn’t allowed to have other partners. Unless, that is, it was someone he’d brought in to fuck _me_ so _he_ could watch. He beat me for any reason, at the drop of a hat, and more than once, he very nearly killed me. I’m still surprised he never actually did. You okay?”

He stops because Steve has started shaking. And weirdly, this small, uncontrolled physical reaction in the man he loves — would die for, Bucky knows deep in his heart — is what brings him back, closer to his body. He’s still floating outside, just a little, but it’s clearer. He’s closer to home. Steve is shaking, and Bucky loves him, and that brings him almost home.

Steve exhales a shuddering breath. “I’m going to fucking kill him,” he spits, low and menacing, all the more truthful for its quietness. “I’m gonna murder him, and I’m not gonna feel bad about it.”

Bucky squeezes Steve’s hands this time, offering him a small, joyless smile. “I wouldn’t blame you,” he says honestly. “But I don’t need you to do that, not for me.” Then, “Do you want me to fast forward?”

“No,” Steve says quickly, determined to stick it out, “I want to hear everything. Anything you want to tell me. You had to survive this. I can listen to it.”

Bucky nods. “Okay,” he says softly, and keeps going. “After probably about a year with Crossbones, they figured I was indoctrinated enough to start running missions. See, this whole time they’d been brainwashing me, they’d also been training me to be highly skilled in combat, sniping, and espionage. At first, I was only running missions with Crossbones as my handler. After a while, they started sending me on solo runs. I was—”

This is it. This is the part he can’t stand, the part he’s been trying to delay telling Steve since the beginning.

This is the part that could actually make Steve leave.

Bucky’s voice won’t come out any louder than a whisper as he finally confesses, “I was killing people, Steve. Murdering them. Men, women— _children_.”

Bucky will never be able to forgive himself this, not ever. It doesn’t matter that his mind wasn’t his, he slaughtered kids. He can’t absolve himself of that. No one can.

And since Bucky can’t forgive himself, he won’t fault anyone else who can’t, either. Especially not Steve.

But.

“It wasn’t you,” Steve breathes, freeing one hand from Bucky’s, to reach up and so softly touch his face. “They made you do it, it wasn’t your fault.”

“I still did it,” Bucky whispers. He can’t meet Steve’s eyes, so his eyes lock on the sofa cushions between them instead. “I still remember every face, every life I snuffed out.”

Steve’s thumb brushes over Bucky’s cheekbone. “I’m so sorry,” he whispers.

“Yeah,” Bucky replies quietly, staring down at the fabric of his couch. “Yeah, me too.”

Steve is quiet for a long time. Bucky can’t look up at him, can’t bear to watch Steve’s opinion of him change, in those eyes that have only ever adored him.

Eventually, though, Steve asks him softly, “Are you worried that, after hearing all this, I hate you now?”

“Yes,” Bucky replies immediately, because that is exactly what he’s been thinking in the silence. “ _I_ hate me, so you’d be well within your rights to hate me, too.”

But then Steve’s hand, which has continued to gently cradle Bucky’s jaw through all of this, suddenly grabs hold of his chin instead, lifting Bucky’s face to look him in the eyes. Those deep, blue eyes that are full to bursting with absolutely _nothing_ but kindness and love.

“I don’t hate you, Bucky,” Steve tells him firmly. “I hate _them_. I hate what they did to you. I _hate_ that they tortured and brainwashed you, forced you to do these awful things, and then made you think it was _you_.”

His eyes flash with it, the anger, but his grip on Bucky’s chin loosens. And then his other hand is on Bucky’s face, too, and he’s holding onto him, won’t let Bucky look away. Won’t let Bucky not believe this.

“I don’t hate you,” Steve whispers again, “not even a little. I _love_ you. I love who you are. And you are not that. You’re not a killer. _They_ are.”

And Steve’s palms on his face feel closer to God than Bucky has ever felt before. It’s not possible, it isn’t, but as his eyes flutter shut on unshed tears, Bucky feels like this is the closest he’ll ever get to it — to absolution. No one can really absolve him, but it almost feels, for just a moment, like maybe Steve can get damn close.

As Bucky quietly just tries to breathe, his inhale shuddering with the tears he’s trying hard not to shed, he feels Steve shift closer to him, wrapping arms around his neck and shoulders, and pulling him in to hold him close. He’s so solid where Bucky is shakily unsure, so warm where Bucky has long only felt cold. Bucky presses his face into Steve’s shoulder. Feels like melting into him, allowing Steve to occupy every fibre of his being until he is purely cleansed. Steve presses his warm lips to Bucky’s face, and Bucky hasn’t felt this whole in _decades_.

Finally, after a long moment of just breathing, of just letting himself be held and loved despite it all, Bucky sniffs, and sits up. Steve lets him go, but not far. His fingers thread through Bucky’s again, and he squeezes.

“When did you meet Nat?” Steve asks, deliberately changing track by a little.

“Mm,” Bucky hums, trying to shift tone with him. “Well, I’d been running missions on my own long enough that they felt comfortable sending Crossbones away for a while,” he explains. “I don’t know what he was doing — I never knew anything other than the essentials of my own missions — but he was gone for a long time. He’d come back unexpectedly every now and then and rough me up, remind me I belonged to him, but then he’d be off again. Somewhere in there, Codename Black Widow joined us from a Hydra group in a different part of Russia. They called it the Red Room. It was the recruitment and training center for children.”

“Children?” Steve asks, his eyebrows pressing together again. “But _you_ were a child when they got you, why didn’t you go there?”

Bucky lips quirk into a mirthless smile. “Because the Red Room recruits from infancy.”

The color drains from Steve’s face as his mouth drops open in shock.

“They get babies from orphanages,” Bucky starts to list, “unwanted ‘problem’ toddlers, kids of Hydra agents—they even buy babies from parents who are impoverished and deeply in debt, claiming they adopt them out to wealthy Americans. Obviously, Nat has never known which was her circumstance, but one way or another, she’d been raised in it. They taught her how to kill while looking like the most harmless non-threat on the planet. Anyway, she’d aged out, and when that happens, the Red Room kids get sent out to other Hydra groups to be useful elsewhere.”

Bucky wets his lips, remembering. “To this day, I can’t explain what happened,” he says, his voice soft, almost a whisper again, “but something about her—something about _us_ — When we were around each other, we both started to feel...like _people_ again. Not just weapons. That’s when the brainwashing started coming apart for both of us.”

Steve silently rubs his thumbs over Bucky’s knuckles.

“We weren’t lucid enough to even be able to confidently say that slaughtering people was always wrong, but we knew we didn’t want to be there anymore. We didn’t want to _do this_ anymore. That,” Bucky adds, “and we’d fallen in love.”

He actually does smile a little, thinking about it. The light she was in the dark haze of his life. The way it felt to fall for her, when he hadn’t known kindness in five long years. When he didn’t, at that point, even remember a time when someone had touched him gently. When he couldn’t always remember his own name.

“It was something neither of us had ever felt before. It made me realize that whatever fucked-up situation Crossbones had me in, it wasn’t love, no matter what everyone else insisted. I _loved_ Natasha, and I would have died rather than hurt her. And I meant that in a very real way, we knew that if they found out about us, they would have forced us to kill each other. I was Rumlow’s, and she had been promised to this other guy — The Red…Protector, or something like that. He didn’t live on our base, but he’d visit her there. And we never knew when Crossbones was gonna be back, or when one of us would be sent out on a mission. But we knew we had to be ready to leave at a moment’s notice, whenever the opportunity presented itself. Finally, it did.

“Natasha and I were sent on a mission together. No handlers, just us. It was bare bones and complex, and we were told that if we gave away our cover, they would not come for us. Instead, we were given cyanide capsules, should we be made. If we failed, they said, we should return immediately, but both of us knew that meant that they’d kill us themselves. Success was the only option.”

Steve grunts a little, clearly trying to stay quiet and just listen, but it’s deeply endearing to Bucky how he can’t help but make these little distressed noises now and then at the idea of Bucky’s life being in danger.

Bucky smiles at him, and continues, “Except that Natasha and I had spent over a year at this point pretending to still be absolutely gung-ho for the cause, and continuing to carry out missions, while slowly helping each other out of the fog of all the mind-fuckery they had us under. We’d found ways to stop taking the drugs without them noticing. We bore it as our respective owners continued to abuse us, but when we were alone, we were each other’s. We were our _own_ ,” he corrects. “So they sent us out together, expecting us to be good, loyal assassins, complete our mission, and return. Instead, we got to our location, dug the tracking devices out of each other’s skin, and ran.”

“You got away,” Steve breathes. It’s not a question, because the answer is sitting right in front of him, holding his hands, but he sounds enraptured.

Bucky nods. “For the first seven months, we were constantly moving,” he explains. “We never stayed the night in the same city twice. We’d steal to eat, and to travel, and to board, and other than that, we were just trying like hell to train our minds not to unconsciously respond to Hydra commands anymore. I don’t think either of us could have done it alone, but we weren’t alone. We had each other.”

He sighs. “That kind of stress doesn’t work well for a relationship, though, and we fought a _lot_. But we were so codependent, we literally couldn’t survive without each other. We always ended up making up, and we loved each other like crazy, and neither of us knew what a healthy relationship even _looked_ like at that point, so we genuinely thought it was working. Eventually, we ended up in the States, somewhere in Indiana. I was already a citizen, so I legally changed my last name, and then Nat hacked the system, and erased all legal traces of James Zimaev from existence.”

“She did _what?_ ” Steve asks, either outraged or incredibly impressed, it’s hard to tell.

Either way, Bucky laughs. “Another thing she learned in the Red Room,” he explains.

“Holy shit,” Steve mutters, “she’s way more nefarious than I even thought.”

And _now_ Bucky can tell. Steve is _deeply_ impressed with his best friend. Bucky beams, proud of her.

“Anyway,” he says, trying to finish this goddamn story before the sun comes up, “Nat’s identity was harder to fake, but somehow, when she hacked in to alter my record, she also found a way to create enough falsified documentation for herself, with this whole made up life, that she could pass an inspection of her records. She made Natasha her documented first name — even though in Russian, Natasha is just a nickname for Natalia — because it was ‘more American’ according to her, and she only slightly anglicized her last name from Romanova to Romanoff. She’s got more balls than I have. It was like she was daring them to come for her. I just wanted to hide.”

“Is this when you started going by Bucky?” Steve asks.

“No, that wasn’t until much later, after Nat was already gone,” Bucky tells him. “That’s why she didn’t realize it was me you were dating. I went by Jim for a while outside of our house, but it never really fit me.”

“No?”

“No,” Bucky laughs. “I always felt like I was Captain Kirk whenever anyone called me Jim. Every time, all I heard was, ‘He’s dead, Jim.’ It was weird.”

Steve chuckles warmly.

“Barnes was my grandmother’s maiden name on my mom’s side, but Hydra wasn’t all that aware of my ma at all, so it felt safe enough to use. They knew my dad had married someone, but somehow, he kept her a secret from them. Maybe they just didn’t care enough to try very hard to look for her. They didn’t have a use for her.”

Steve hums, thoughtful. “What happened with you and Nat?”

“We stayed together for a while,” Bucky says. “We loved each other so much, we couldn’t imagine not being together. But she was bold where I was afraid, and I hated that she seemed to want to live her life as loudly as she could. I thought she was going to get us both killed. Meanwhile, she was miserable in small-town Indiana. She wanted to be _free_. She wanted to be around people. She wanted to live unafraid. But I was _always_ afraid.”

Bucky sighs. This memory still hurts, no matter how long it’s been. “So one night, we were fighting about the same damn things we always fought about, circling around and around, back to every problem we couldn’t fix between us, and she was yelling about something, when suddenly she just...stopped yelling. And she got this look on her face like she just... _knew_. I didn’t know what it meant at the time, of course. And usually these fights would go on and on, and we’d just be saying the same things over and over, until we gave up fighting, and had angry make-up sex. But that night, she stopped yelling. And she walked up to me, and kissed me like she used to when we were sneaking off to be together in Hydra. Sweet, and _desperate_. She hadn’t kissed me like that in years. And god, I loved her so much.

“We slept together that night, and it was more tender and passionate than it had been in a while. And I was such an idiot, I thought maybe we were finally going to be okay again. But when I woke up in the morning, she was gone.”

Steve’s face falls. “What?” he breathes, crestfallen.

“She left a note,” Bucky says, “but it didn’t say much. It broke my heart. I didn’t think I was ever going to see her again. And to be fair, I didn’t, until six weeks ago when I broke up with you.”

And now Steve’s eyebrows pull together once again. “What?” he repeats, this time abrupt and confused. Bucky frowns, too.

“I thought she told you,” he says.

But, “No,” Steve tells him. “She came to see you?”

“Yeah,” Bucky responds, surprised that Steve doesn’t know this, “and she was pissed that I hurt you. I was harsh with her, I thought for a minute she might—be involved or something.”

“She didn’t tell me,” Steve says softly. “She’s kept all of your secrets, love. She actually got really pissed at _me_ when I asked her about you, she said I shouldn’t’ve been prying into your business if you didn’t want me to. I told her I wasn’t prying, and explained my investigation, and how I’d stumbled across your involvement, but she was still pissed I was asking her to confirm. All she told me was that you were the James she left Hydra with. She was crazy in love with you, that I know. She _never_ told me she just left you like that, I can’t believe she did that to you,” he finishes, reaching up with their joined hands to brush his thumb across Bucky’s shocked face.

She didn’t tell him. She kept Bucky’s secrets, even after everything. Even over easing her best friend’s pain. Natasha kept his secrets when even he would have expected her to tell.

Bucky blinks, and shakes his head. “She was so much of my life,” he breathes, picking the story back up. “We’d only known each other a few years, but she was my entire world. When she left, that was when I joined the army. I was trying to escape her, trying to be my own man. For some reason, I thought that meant taking orders again.”

Steve nods sagely. “Military indoctrination runs hot in this country, and I say that as a veteran.”

“Yeah,” Bucky agrees. “Turns out, the army _didn’t_ actually solve all of my problems like they said they would. I was still lost and searching. I—sucked a _lot_ of dicks, and almost got kicked out for it, but I didn’t stop. Not until I got sent overseas as part of a spec ops team. _That’s_ when I started going by Bucky, with that squad.”

He smiles. “I _loved_ that squad. They used to call us the Howling Commandos as a joke. They said we were like the Hundred-and-First Airborne during World War Two,” he adds on Steve’s questioning eyebrow.

“The Screaming Eagles?” Steve asks, laughing as he gets the joke.

Bucky grins. “We were always ready, and always a surprise,” he says, nodding. “And so we were dubbed. It finally felt like I was doing something _good_ , that I was _good_ at. We were going into villages and liberating people from these bands of extremists, we were actually doing something worth doing. I mean, as much as you can do when you’re a soldier in an invading army. But then....”

Bucky trails off, but Steve picks it up.

“You lost your arm.” Again, not a question, but Bucky nods the confirmation anyway.

“It wasn’t even supposed to be our job,” he says. “We got sent over to another unit because their spec ops team had been unexpectedly delayed coming back from a mission. I don’t remember why, I think they lost their transport or something. But we had a reputation of being the best, and this unit needed our brand of op, so we went.”

That crease is appearing between Steve’s eyebrows again, like he’s trying to solve a difficult equation. But he doesn’t say anything, so Bucky keeps telling his story.

“It was a weird mission from the beginning,” he admits. “We were going after four guys from this unit that had gone rogue after doing something bad, but they wouldn’t tell us exactly what they’d done. Kept handwaving every time we’d ask, use vague explanations like, ‘They acted outside the US Army’s code of conduct.’ Which, as you know, could mean just about anything. This was still before Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell was repealed, so it technically could have even meant they’d all been having a gay orgy, and got caught. Except the COs’ faces would darken whenever they’d say it, so you just...you knew it wasn’t that. You knew it was something _real_ bad.”

The crease between Steve’s eyebrows deepens even more.

“So we’re sent out to track these guys down,” Bucky continues, “and we do, but something’s wrong. We don’t know the area, we don’t know the locals, and we got pulled in and sent out so quickly, we barely have the intel we need. At least, that’s what we thought. We found out the hard way that whatever intel we _did_ have was wrong, because by the time we catch up with these guys, we realize we’re trapped. It seemed like we’d gotten to where we were undetected, but we figured out real fuckin’ fast that if we tried to go in further, or get out, the terrorists these guys had evidently joined up with would not only see us, they’d have easy pickings. On top of that, our comms went down hard, and we had no way of contacting base at all.”

“Fuck,” Steve whispers, his expression darkening more and more as Bucky tells this story.

“We were stuck there for three days after we lost contact, just trying to survive on rations, and keep quiet enough not to get killed. We were pretty much out of drinking water, and things were starting to get dire, when it all changed. One of the guys we’d been tailing suddenly came out of their camp, right at us. Knew exactly where we were, and he was coming at us slow, surrendering. He was...sobbing. Kept saying he should have stopped the others, but that he ‘never touched those little girls,’ and just _begging_ us to help him.”

Bucky blinks, reliving the horror he felt — the way he blanched, and all the blood drained from his face. When he speaks again, his voice comes out much quieter. “My pal, Tim Dugan — we all just called him Dum Dum — he was right next to me, and he knew I couldn’t just leave the guy, not when he was asking for help like that. And he warned me. Told me not to. But I...I couldn’t leave him.”

Steve exhales hard. Bucky winces.

“I leaned out of our hiding place, and reached out to him. I had my rifle in my right hand, so I reached out with my left. I was just trying to get him into our cover, so he wasn’t out in the open. Turns out the guy was strapped with a shitload of C-4. Soon as I was close to him, he blew himself up. I guess that was the cue for a bunch of other bombs to go off around us, too. I got blown off my feet, and knocked out by the blast.”

Steve is shaking his head silently, eyes downcast.

“When I woke up,” Bucky finishes, “it was over a week later, I was lying in a hospital bed stateside, and my arm was gone. I still don’t know exactly how I got outta there.”

“The team you replaced moved in to get you out as soon as the bombs went off,” Steve tells him immediately, still just staring down at the space between them. “They’d been waiting just outside your zone for an opportunity to rescue your squad without provoking an assault.”

Bucky’s heart stops. His eyes go wide. “How d’you know that?” he asks breathlessly.

Steve looks up at him, and his eyes are so, so blue.

“That was my team,” Steve whispers wonderingly. “I was there. I went in and dug you out of the rubble after the explosion, carried you to safety, and triaged you myself until I could get you an airlift.”

Bucky’s mouth is hanging open. “You—? _How—?!_ ”

“I didn’t know your name,” Steve explains, eyes wide and earnest, “and I never really saw your face. You were covered in blood, and ash, and dirt, and I was just trying to keep you from bleeding out, or suffocating. I never realized that was _you_.”

“ _You_ were the one who saved me?” Bucky asks, shocked. “Jones told me the Captain of the squad that rescued us dug me out and saved my life, that was _you?!_ ”

“It was,” Steve confirms, awed, like he can’t quite believe it either. “On our way back from our last mission, our transport got blown up, and we had to walk all the way back to base. We were still in contact, but it took us a few days. The day we got back was the day _after_ they lost contact with your team. Sent us out after you the next day, and when we got there and realized you were surrounded, we didn’t have a choice but to wait. The explosions were the opportunity. Your whole squad was screaming at me to get to you. You were bleeding out, and your arm was totally gone a few inches below your shoulder. You weren’t breathing when I pulled you out, but I gave you CPR, and you started to breathe again. All around us, our teams were fighting off those terrorists, but I was just focused on keeping you alive. Your pal, Dugan, with the mustache?”

Bucky nods, speechless.

“He rode with you and me to get you an airlift. He was injured, too, but he wouldn’t let anyone treat him until you were out of the woods. Told me about you as we went, said you were the best person a guy could know, and solemnly charged me with your life. A week later, my CO told me you’d made it, that you were back home, and alive. I was _so_ relieved. I’d been asking about you. But I didn’t think I was ever gonna get to see you again, I didn’t even know your name. Somehow, in all the chaos, no one ever mentioned it to me.”

Tears are burning in Bucky’s eyes again, this time because he’s so entirely overwhelmed with this. Steve has already been his saving grace time and time again. And now _this_.

Steve Rogers — the man Bucky is totally and completely in love with, who found him in a bar and somehow saw something in him, who has changed everything about Bucky’s life for the better over and over, _Steve_ — is the same man who saved his life almost ten years ago.

Bucky surges forward, and catches Steve’s mouth with his own, pulling Steve into a deep and awestruck kiss that ramps up until both of them are gasping.

“I love you,” Bucky murmurs as he presses his forehead to Steve’s.

“ _God_ , Bucky,” Steve soughs. “I love you so fucking much, I’m so _fucking glad_ you survived that, I can’t _believe_ —”

“You saved my life,” Bucky cuts in wonderingly, hands on Steve’s face. “You actually saved my actual life, and now— Now you’re _here_ , and you’re doing it _again_ , and—”

“I love you,” Steve interrupts firmly, his voice thick and throaty, and then he yanks Bucky in to kiss him again.

It takes a few minutes for either of them to disentangle, with the way they’re holding onto each other, and kissing like the world has slipped away, leaving just them two. The only reason they stop at all is because, halfway into becoming horizontal on the sofa with the clear intention of trying for round three of the evening, Bucky yawns hugely.

At that, Steve cracks up, changes course, bundles Bucky up in his arms, and moves them both back into the bedroom.

Bucky only grumbles a _little_ as Steve deposits him into his own bed, and he stops immediately when Steve climbs in with him, wraps his big arms around him from behind, and presses his lips tenderly to Bucky’s neck in a tickling kiss.

Giggling, Bucky shifts so he can stretch his arm out toward the light on his nightstand to turn it off. But just as his fingers find the pull chain, Steve stops him.

“Bucky,” he says quietly, serious, against the shell of Bucky’s ear. Bucky abandons the light, and rolls over to face him.

“Yeah?” he asks.

Steve examines his face. He wets his lips. “How old were you when you left?”

Bucky blinks. The question feels abrupt, and maybe not quite what Steve was ramping up to ask him. “I was twenty-two.”

“God, you were there for _seven years,_ ” Steve whispers, his hand tightening on Bucky’s waist. He looks pained, and Bucky can’t take it.

Bucky reaches up and cups Steve’s jaw, stroking his soft beard. Steve turns his face into Bucky’s hand, kissing his palm as his eyes squeeze shut. Bucky watches him thoughtfully.

“Is that all you wanted to ask me?” he breathes, knowing it isn’t.

And indeed, Steve sighs, and shakes his head.

“What is it?”

Steve hesitates, clearly worried about voicing something that Bucky may not like. Bucky just waits, rubbing his finger pads over Steve’s jaw through his beard. Gives him time to say what he needs.

And, eventually, he does.

Quietly, as he strokes his fingers in gentle circles over the bare skin of Bucky’s waist, Steve asks, “Do you really think they’re not going to come after you just because they believe we’re not together anymore?”

Ah.

It’s Bucky who sighs this time. “Of course I don’t think that,” he admits. “Now that Rumlow’s seen me, I know it’s just a matter of time before they find me, and finally take me back. Breaking up with you was just supposed to save _you_ from them. I’m already lost.”

“You are not,” Steve argues firmly, like he’s actually angry that Bucky would say something like that. He’s so wonderful. “I’m here, I’ll protect you.”

Steve pauses for a moment, and seems to be considering his next words.

“Listen,” he says finally, resolved, “I know we have—responsibilities here. I know. But your entire _life_ is on the line, baby.”

His hand leaves Bucky’s waist to cradle his face, thumb brushing over his sharp cheekbone.

“Maybe we should just go,” he soughs. “Find somewhere to lay low, at least until we can figure out how to get you out of their reach once and for all.” Steve searches Bucky’s face again, then whispers, “I think we should go.”

“I’ve tried running from them before, Steve,” Bucky whispers back, shaking his head a little.

“And it worked for thirteen years,” Steve tells him. And he’s so _sure_ , the way Bucky has never been sure of anything. Except this. Except Steve. “We won’t need that long. We’ll figure out a solution, Buck, I promise.”

“How can you say that after everything I just told you?” Bucky asks, and he hears the pleading in his voice, begging Steve for an answer, because he wants desperately for there to be one.

And, impossibly, Steve gives him one. “Because I believe in you,” he says firmly. “And I believe in me, and in Natasha, and that if we pool our resources, we could get some shit done.”

“If T’Chaka couldn’t—”

“That doesn’t mean that no one can,” Steve interrupts. “We can. _You_ can.”

Bucky almost laughs at how ridiculous that sounds. “How the fuck am I going to do that?” he asks.

“Because you’re not alone anymore, honey,” Steve breathes, so fucking sweet. “And you don’t have to be alone ever again, that I _promise_ you.”

Bucky’s eyes flutter shut at that, at the rush of overwhelming emotion that comes with a promise like that uttered by Steve Rogers’ lips.

“ _Fuck_ ,” he sighs, and opens his eyes again. Steve’s right. He’s wonderful, and he’s sure, and he’s right. “Okay,” Bucky says, finally decided. “Okay, let’s go. I’ll go. If you’re with me, I’ll go.”

A relieved smile breaks over Steve’s perfect face before he ducks in to kiss Bucky’s mouth, honeyed and sweet.

🎈

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [The National Domestic Violence Hotline](https://www.thehotline.org/) provides support and resources to domestic violence survivors, as well as their loved ones. If you or someone you know is in an unsafe situation, you can speak to them over the phone or through online chat, or use their resources to create a safety plan to leave an abusive partner. Call 1-800-799-7233 or visit [thehotline.org](https://www.thehotline.org/) for more information and resources.
> 
> [The National Sexual Assault Hotline](http://online.rainn.org/) provides support and resources to people who have been affected sexual violence. Anyone affected by sexual assault, whether it happened to you or someone you care about, can find support on the National Sexual Assault Hotline. It is confidential and safe. Call 1-800-656-4673, or you can visit [online.rainn.org](http://online.rainn.org/) to receive support via confidential online chat.
> 
> **Next time:**   
> 


	11. Eleven: November 19th

Six weeks after the first morning Steve woke up next to the man he’s come to regard as the love of his life, he wakes up beside him a second time.

Actually, he’s really more _entwined_ with Bucky. Like even in sleep, they were searching for each other, pulling toward each other. Steve rises into lazy consciousness with Bucky’s arm looped over his belly, Bucky’s gently snoring face tucked into the crook of his neck, Bucky’s ankles hooked around his ankles, and his own painfully hard morning wood between his legs.

They didn’t end up having sex a third time last night, even though they got close twice. They were exhausted by the time Bucky agreed to run away with Steve, both way too tired to get fully erect for a third time, despite their best efforts. But they _did_ get naked, just to lazily make out, and touch, and rub against each other. And then they fell asleep tangled together, skin-to-skin.

And now Steve is waking up, hard as fuck, pressed against a very naked, extremely hot Bucky, who _loves_ him, and he can’t help himself.

Bucky doesn’t wake up — just sighs, and keeps sleeping — when Steve rolls him on his back, pulling away from him just enough to start pressing hot, languid kisses to his neck, his collarbone, his arms, his chest. He does wake up during this process, blinking awake as his cock fattens from half-hard to rock-hard in an impressively short amount of time.

The first waking noise Bucky makes today is the prettiest moan Steve thinks he’s ever heard, when Steve bites down on the meat of his chest.

“‘Mornin’, doll,” Bucky mutters, his voice rough with sleep and arousal, and Steve smiles as he laves his tongue over one of Bucky’s nipples. Bucky sighs sweetly. “ _Fuck._ This is _so_ much better than an alarm clock.”

Steve mumbles a laugh into his skin, then moves over to his other nipple to give it equal attention. When Bucky starts to arch into his mouth, Steve’s mouth and its kisses travel further down his torso, launching an expedition over his belly and toward his hips, eliciting a deep and beautiful whine from Bucky’s slack mouth.

“How’re you doin’ this morning, honey?” Steve murmurs into Bucky’s inner thigh, as his hand circles around Bucky’s cock, and starts to lazily stroke him, making him whine again, and squirm so pretty. “You feeling okay?”

“Yeah,” Bucky rasps breathlessly, his head tipping back into the pillows. “Yeah’m—‘m good.”

Steve hums in approval, and hooks his free hand under Bucky’s knee, folding it up to his chest and ducking in to kiss his hole, still a little swollen from last night. Bucky hisses a gasp at the touch, then pulls his other leg up and open, making room for Steve to lick gently at his entrance.

“ _Fuck_ ,” Bucky moans again.

“That feel good?” Steve asks, then doesn’t wait for an answer before doing it again.

From the way Bucky’s hand flies into Steve’s hair, he’s pretty sure he can tell the answer, but still, Bucky pants, “Yeah, yeah. Feels— _fuck!_ Feels good, pal. Keep going.”

Steve had no plans on stopping, anyway, but now that he’s been given the go-ahead, he begins to eat Bucky out in earnest. Bucky’s still pliant from being fucked last night, and Steve quickly slips his tongue inside him. The little noises that fall out of Bucky’s mouth, clearly unbidden, clearly half-stifled and uncontained, are going straight to Steve’s dick, and if he weren’t so set on letting this time be slow and languid and sweet, he’d rush this part just so he could fuck into Bucky’s hot, tight hole all the sooner. But he does have _some_ measure of self control, and Bucky is reaching up with the hand not fisted in Steve’s hair to grasp blindly at the wall above his head, and Steve is going to make this last.

As Bucky gasps out Steve’s name, Steve rubs his index finger against Bucky’s rim, using the slick of his own saliva to push it inside to the first knuckle, alongside his tongue. When Bucky pushes down against him, he slides it in further.

“ _God, Stevie_ ,” Bucky hisses. “Fuck, honey—please, _please._ ”

Steve lifts his head to look up at Bucky, already fucked out and wanton, leaving his finger to prod at Bucky’s soft inner walls. “Please what, sweetheart?” he asks. His own voice comes out rough and desperate in a way he wasn’t intending or expecting.

“Please, please, please,” Bucky just whispers. Then, “ _Please,_ baby— _unh_ —fuck me. Want your cock, honey— _ah!_ — _please_.”

It takes... _serious_ effort not to immediately honor this request. But Steve does nip at Bucky’s inner thigh, mumbling something about handing him the slick, which Bucky scrambles to do.

He’s gonna make this last, he’s determined to, but there’s absolutely nothing wrong with the way Bucky groans deep in his throat when Steve slips two slick fingers inside him. Even better how he gasps and starts panting as Steve begins to steadily, lazily stretch him. The rise and fall of his chest so pretty, Steve wants to climb inside of him, live in the space behind his ribs, guarding and protecting his heart and his soul and his body, and radiating a love so bright, Bucky would warm from the inside with it — forever safe, forever light, forever warm. Steve wants so badly to be that for Bucky. Wants _so badly_ to make him feel happier and safer than he’s ever felt before.

Bucky’s hand has softened in Steve’s hair, and slipped down by measured inches to rest and twitch against the side of his neck, his thumb absently stroking at Steve’s beard. His eyes are closed, his head tilted back against the pillows, as he breathes raggedly through parted lips that Steve has literally dreamt of all these months since that night he first saw them at that bar. Those lips that looked so fucking pretty wrapped around his cock last night.

His erection strains against the bed at the thought, brushing against the sheets slightly in a friction that is nowhere near enough for him. Steve lets his gaze wander to the column of Bucky’s throat as it bobs rhythmically when Steve gradually adds a third finger to his needy, precious, swollen pink hole. He imagines biting up that pretty, alabaster throat, marking Bucky as _his_ with purple, pink and blue, which would fade eventually to yellows and greens, and then softly disappear, just so Steve could mark him up all over again. He wonders if Bucky would let him. Wonders if Bucky would try to hide the marks, embarrassed, or wear them proudly for all to see how he belongs to someone who loves him desperately.

Bucky moans again, a noise which Steve decides immediately is his favorite sound in the entire world. His fingers brush over the rounded bulb of Bucky’s prostate, and Bucky lets out a shuddering cry that causes Steve to grind against the sheets beneath him, losing a modicum of the self-control he’s been so careful to maintain through this process. He rubs at the spot again, and Bucky _groans_ and gasps.

“ _Fuck_ ,” drops from Bucky’s mouth like a reward for Steve doing well. “Fuck—honey. Honey— _god!_ Baby, I need— _Baby!_ ”

Steve takes pity on him. He doesn’t cease the movements of his fingers, but he does start kissing his way up Bucky’s pelvis, his stomach, his chest, his neck, until Steve presses his mouth to Bucky’s sweet lips, and swallows the little ‘ _oh, ah, oh’_ noises Bucky can’t help but mutter now that Steve is making him feel so damn good.

Bucky’s left hand leaves the wall to join his right in stroking Steve’s beard through the kiss, cool metal that somehow feels soft like skin. The corners of Steve’s mouth curl up at the touch. He hasn’t said anything about it yet, but Steve is getting the distinct impression that the hair on his face is doing things to Bucky that maybe even Bucky can’t explain.

Steve files away that thought for later. Right now, he has other things in mind.

“You want me to fuck you, honey?” Steve murmurs into Bucky’s mouth, smile widening into a predatory grin when Bucky gives him an absolutely debauched sound in response.

“ _Please_ ,” he begs, hands scrambling over Steve’s face and neck. “Please, baby, please, oh _god please_.”

Pleased, Steve rubs his spot again, and Bucky practically shouts.

“Roll a rubber on me,” Steve orders, ducking to press wet kisses against Bucky’s throat as he scrambles to obey.

He can tell that Bucky’s hands are trembling as he rolls the condom onto Steve’s hard as fuck cock, but that just makes him smile even wider. He wants to devour Bucky, swallow him whole, keep him inside himself forever. Safe. Warm. Happy.

Steve will do anything for this man, anything at all. Without thought, without question. He’ll eat him up, he loves him so.

He latches onto the soft of Bucky’s neck, and sucks gently, like he’s nursing Bucky’s reaction out of him. Bucky’s breath hitches, and Steve bites down gently. He won’t leave marks, not right now, not until Bucky tells him it’s all right. Not where it’s visible, anyway. He will, however, nip and suck, lick and kiss, all over Bucky’s ripe throat, taste the honey of his body. Bucky is the sweetest thing Steve has ever tasted. The honor of the gods has been bestowed upon him, and he has been granted a taste of heavenly nectar.

He’d better remember to send Zeus a thank-you card, Steve thinks wildly as Bucky arches into him again, whimpering so sweet.

Steve lets his mouth travel lower, to Bucky’s clavicle. Here, below his collar, he doesn’t hold back. He bites down roughly, scraping his teeth across Bucky’s collarbone, and reveling in the way Bucky absolutely squirms under his ministrations. _This is my body, which is for you_. Steve takes freely of the sacrament.

But then Bucky whines out, “ _Steve_ ,” and it’s so plaintive and desperate that Steve can’t deny him anymore. He pulls his fingers out, making soothing shushing noises when Bucky lets out something like a sob at the loss, and makes sure to be quick about lining up. Then he slowly feeds his cock into Bucky’s greedy hole.

Bucky lets out a sigh like relief as Steve fills him, which is enough for Steve to feel feral, growling deep in his throat — deep in his _soul_ — as he pulls out, and then pushes back in, as molasses-slow as he can manage, even though everything in him screams out to pound into this lovely man as hard and fast as his body will allow.

He begins to dissolve into it, the gasping sounds like music from Bucky’s lips, the slow pull and stretch of it, the way sweat begins to sheen them both over, curls the little baby hairs at Bucky’s hairline even more than usual. He cards his fingers into Bucky’s soft curls, and fists his hand in that pretty hair, leaning back down to press open-mouth kisses to Bucky’s sharp jaw, soft neck, kiss-bruised lips.

Bucky moans, and Steve swallows it, returns it with his own. He lets go of Bucky’s hair to reach between them and stroke his leaking cock, thumb at the slit, press against the tender spot just under the crown, and Bucky shudders and trembles beneath him, clenches around him, sheds a tear onto his own cheekbone that Steve licks away.

“Come on, honey,” Steve rasps, his voice low and rough, his lips brushing the curve of Bucky’s ear. _Slow in, slow out, deep deep deep._

Bucky arches and gasps, clenching hard, both hands scrabbling at Steve’s back, scratching fingernails into flesh, and for a moment, everything stops but the pull of his breath.

And then he’s coming, spurting wet warmth onto both of their stomachs, both of their chests, and Steve fucks him through it, rocking slow and sweet, kissing the salt of his face as he shakes through the aftershocks.

As soon as Bucky slumps back, Steve pulls out just enough to pound back into him, _fast_ now and _hard_ , sinking his teeth deep into the meat of Bucky’s shoulder as Bucky wraps his legs around his waist and whispers in his ear, “ _Yeah, baby, yeah, come on, come on, come on._ ”

And that’s enough. Steve’s pretty sure he stops breathing, pretty sure his eyes roll back, and maybe he’s dying, but what a heavenly way to die, he thinks.

Once he finally collapses, returning to the earth, he searches blindly for Bucky’s mouth. Bucky giggles and comes to him, kissing him sweetly. Steve could live in this kiss happily for the rest of his life.

He doesn’t, though. When his consciousness returns to him eventually, he gets up and goes into Bucky’s en suite bathroom, ties the condom off and throws it away. He washes his hands, and finds another washcloth in the cupboard Bucky directed him to last night, using it to wash himself off, and then rinsing it out again, making sure it’s damp and warm for Bucky.

When he comes back into the bedroom, he pauses for a moment, just to bask in the sculpted beauty of Bucky lying fucked out on the bed, splayed across the rumpled sheets, his hair stuck to his forehead and draped over his pillow, eyes closed, a smile on his face, painted like a Pollock in cum.

Steve returns to him, climbing into bed beside him, and using the washcloth to sadly wipe away the masterpiece they made together. Somehow, he suspects Bucky might not want to wear it for the rest of the day, pretty as it looks on him.

He seems to have judged correctly, because once Bucky is clean, he rolls over into Steve’s arms, tucking himself against his ribs, and humming gratefully.

“I love you,” he murmurs, muffled by Steve’s chest. And no, Steve thinks, he was wrong before. _This_ is his favorite sound.

He kisses the top of Bucky’s sweaty head, and he doesn’t even mind the sweat. “I love you, too, honey. So goddamn much.”

“Fuck,” Bucky adds, “I’m _so_ glad we’re sexually compatible.”

That startles a laugh out of Steve. “Sex has been good so far?” he asks as innocently as he can.

Bucky pushes himself up to lie on top of Steve instead of snuggling up to his side, grinning sweetly at him as he rests his chin on his own hands, stacked one over the other over Steve’s chest, and scritching gently at his chest hair.

“The sex has been _amazing_ so far, babe,” he says softly. “You are actually my perfect man, do you know that?”

Steve’s eyebrows twitch. “I am?” he asks, his voice higher than he means for it to be. His heart is fluttering against his chest, and he’s sure Bucky can hear it from where he’s lying.

He wasn’t just talking dirty last night when he said it’s like Bucky was made just for him. Bucky is the best person Steve has ever known, and also the hottest, strongest, bravest, kindest, most interesting, most incredible. And now, knowing what he feels like inside, knowing how he looks and sounds as Steve is loving on him, drawing the orgasm from him — there has never been, nor ever will there be someone better suited for Steve Rogers than Bucky Barnes.

To think that Bucky feels the same way about _him_ is…overwhelming, to say the least.

But Bucky’s eyes are crinkling in happiness as he nods. “You are,” he sighs, content. “You’re kind, you’re passionate, you’re patient with me even when you’re impatient with the entire world. You’re _gorgeous,_ and your ass is incredible—”

Steve chokes out another surprised laugh.

“You know me, somehow,” Bucky continues, his eyes turning soft and dreamy. “Even though I’ve kept things about myself hidden from you, you still _know_ me. You believe in me. You _love_ me.” He reaches out with one hand and starts stroking his fingers through Steve’s beard again, absently. “And I _know_ you love me, you don’t even have to say it. It’s just _so clear_ in what you do, and how you treat me. You’re gentle, even when you’re rough. And you fuck me _so_ damn good,” he adds, smirking again. “You’re perfect, baby. You are. You’re—” Bucky falters, but then smiles. “I think you might be the love of my life, Steve.”

Steve blinks, his mouth falling open just a little. “Honey,” he breathes out, squeezing his arms tighter around Bucky. “Buck, that’s— I feel _exactly_ the same way about you.”

Bucky’s smile gets so big, it scrunches his nose. Steve pulls him down and kisses his mouth, smiling against his lips when he sighs happily against Steve’s.

When he settles back again, Bucky keeps playing with Steve’s beard. His eyes drop to watch his own fingers card through the hair, turning it this way and that. Steve watches _him_ , so incredibly fond, so deeply in love, and smiles.

“You like the beard?” he asks. He knows the answer, but he wants to hear it anyway.

“ _Mm_ ,” Bucky hums, blue eyes widening a little, an emphatic yes.

He keeps stroking for a minute, and Steve feels much like a pampered cat. He’s pretty sure he’s about to start purring when Bucky winces and meets his eyes.

“Is it a sadness beard?” he asks, a clear shadow of guilt in his eyes.

But Steve just laughs again, loud and booming. “I guess it was, yeah,” he admits as Bucky’s mouth twitches. “But if you like it, I think now it can be something else.”

Bucky grins. “A _sexy_ beard,” he says, watching his fingers brush through it again.

“Yeah?” Steve asks softly, watching _Bucky,_ and feeling so fucking warm, so fucking in love.

Bucky nods. “ _God_ , yeah,” he says wholeheartedly.

And that turns Steve’s smile wicked. He pushes up to kiss Bucky’s lovely mouth, keeps pushing gently through the kiss until Bucky is the one on his back again, Steve lying over him. He ducks to kiss Bucky’s jaw, and then deliberately rubs his beard over the spot he just kissed. Bucky hums a cute giggle, and squirms a little like he’s been tickled. Steve doesn’t stop.

Bucky lets out a startled _moan_ as Steve glides his beard over the soft skin of his neck, then his clavicle. Steve presses a kiss to his collarbone, and chuckles as Bucky writhes underneath him, then glances down to see Bucky’s cock perking up in interest again.

“Jesus _Christ!_ ” Bucky gasps as Steve’s beard travels across his body. Every scratch of hair has Bucky’s cock fattening, and Steve holds him down, holds him in place. “What the _fuck_ is wrong with me?” he moans, not really seeming to care _too_ terribly much about the answer. “I’m thirty-five, why does my dick seem to think I’m nineteen?!”

Steve sucks on Bucky’s hip bone, scrapes his teeth over the skin there, and Bucky shivers under him. He doesn’t point out that, based on what Bucky’s told him of his teenage years, Bucky’s dick probably wasn’t nearly this active when he _was_ nineteen. Between the drugs that were forced into his veins, and the way the person who claimed to love him only raped and controlled him, Steve doubts Bucky’s body had much time to act nineteen at all. Maybe he gets to make up for that now. Maybe Steve can give that to him.

Steve would do _anything_ to do that for Bucky.

By the time Bucky is canting his hips upward and whimpering, Steve has taken the hint. He touches his lips to the head of Bucky’s cock, tonguing the slit and tasting the bitter, salty mix of cum and precum that drools from it. When he slides his lips all the way down the shaft, Bucky makes a noise like he’s weeping.

It doesn’t take much time at all for Steve to suck another orgasm out of Bucky. He’s so fucking pretty when he comes, Steve thinks as he watches Bucky’s head tip back, his spine arch, his mouth fall open. He’s so fucking pretty all the time.

Bucky’s breaths are coming out hard and heaving as he comes down. A smile crests over his face, his hair plastered to his forehead again, and _god_ , he’s the most beautiful person in existence, he really is. His eyes open as Steve returns to him, and he lifts his head to kiss Steve’s mouth, and hum happily against it.

“You’re incredible,” he breathes as he drops his head back down onto the pillows.

Steve smiles. “Not nearly as much as you are,” he says softly, dipping to lay more kisses over his neck. And even though Bucky snorts, he means every word.

“I need a shower,” Bucky tells him weakly. “I’m _disgusting_.”

Well, they’ve had sex four times in the last fifteen hours, and neither of them has showered once in that time, so that tracks.

“Okay,” Steve agrees. “How about you go start the water running, and I’ll stand behind you and keep kissing your neck while you do?”

“Oh no you don’t,” Bucky protests, a warm laugh rumbling in his chest. “You are _not_ getting me to come three times in under an hour, pal, I will pass out.”

“That sounds like a challenge to me,” Steve murmurs, grinning against Bucky’s salty skin.

The laugh bubbles up out of Bucky like he can’t contain it. Steve _loves_ him. _Loves_ seeing him this happy. He’s about to say exactly that, when his phone starts ringing on the nightstand next to him.

In most circumstances like this, Steve would absolutely ignore his ringing phone in favor of lavishing more attention on his amazing, beautiful, joyful boyfriend whom he adores, but he is expecting a rather important call, and they have things they need to get started on if they’re going to get Bucky out of here to somewhere safe. So Steve lifts his head, but twines his fingers through Bucky’s, and looks at the caller ID.

“Mm,” Steve hums to Bucky. “It’s Tony.”

Bucky does the cutest double take ever. “Tony _Stark?_ ” he asks.

“Mhm.”

“Jesus Christ, Tony fucking Stark just _calls_ you,” Bucky mutters wonderingly, and Steve grins at him. He’s so fucking _cute_.

“Well, I texted him last night,” Steve tells him.

“Why?”

“So he can help us. I’m gonna answer, okay?”

“Sure, yeah, yeah,” Bucky says, waving toward the phone.

“Hey, Tone,” Steve answers it. Beneath him, Bucky mutters, “ _Tone_ ,” to himself with something halfway between derision and wonder. Steve grins.

Tony’s voice comes through jovial and enthusiastic, the way he often is over the phone. And in person, really. “Steven!” he cries delightedly. “Your text last night was super cryptic, what’s up?”

“What,” Steve jokes, shifting so he’s sitting back against the wall, and lifting his arm so Bucky can tuck himself under it, “you mean texting you ‘Hey, I need your help, call me,’ at two in the morning wasn’t clear enough for you?”

Tony pauses for a moment, mostly likely trying to parse out what Steve means by that. And indeed, after a moment, he asks tentatively, “Are you trying to tell me you want to fuck me again? Because remember how that worked out last time—”

“That is not even _remotely_ what I’m saying, Tony,” Steve tells him, deadpan.

“Why _not?_ ” Tony whines at once.

“Partly because I _do_ remember how that worked out last time,” Steve says, “and I really don’t feel like we need round two of you calling 911 because I was, quote, ‘being mean.’”

Under his arm, Bucky snorts.

“You _were_ being mean,” Tony insists primly, “but what’s the other partly?”

Steve smiles, and strokes his fingers through Bucky’s soft, sex-tangled hair. “The other partly is that I am _ridiculously_ in love with my boyfriend, so I don’t need you.”

Tony _gasps_. “Cap, you’re dating someone?!” he asks, ecstatic. “How did I not know this?!”

“Don’t take it personally, Tone, it’s been a weird few months.”

“Ooh, intrigue.”

“Anyway, I do need your help,” Steve says seriously.

“Sure,” Tony replies, not hearing Steve’s tone, his voice still laced with levity, “with what? Wedding plans?”

“No,” Steve tells him, “and better if we talk face to face.”

And that stops Tony. There’s a brief silence, then Tony asks carefully, “Why?”

But this isn’t the time to talk about it, not over the phone like this. Steve can’t be completely sure — not after everything Bucky’s explained to him, not after everything he found as he dug into this organization — that someone else isn’t listening.

So all he says is, “Please, Tony.”

Tony’s voice is suddenly _very_ serious. “Shit,” he breathes. “Okay, come by today, I’ll make time whenever you get here.”

“Actually…,” Steve hesitates, “can you come to me?”

There’s a _long_ pause then, and Steve wonders what the problem is.

“You want me to come to Brooklyn?” Tony finally asks. There’s something in his voice that Steve doesn’t quite understand.

“Yeah,” he says. Maybe Tony’s trying to work out his undoubtedly very busy schedule in his head right now.

But there’s another very long, very pregnant pause before Tony answers again.

Finally, voice dripping with incredulity, Tony says, “ _Brooklyn?_ ”

Steve rolls his eyes. “Tony,” he says firmly, understanding now. He does _not_ have time for Tony’s bullshit elitism over boroughs, and his absolutely batshit opinion that _Manhattan_ is somehow better than _Brooklyn_ , which is just _demonstrably_ wrong in _every_ way.

But: “Yeah, yeah, okay,” Tony relents. “If you’re texting me at two in the morning and it’s _not_ a booty call, I guess it must be important.” He pauses again, just for a moment. There’s a lot more vulnerability in his voice when he softly adds, “You know I almost drove out there last night? I was awake when you texted.”

“Yeah,” Steve answers, the edge of his mouth lifting slightly in a wince as he thinks about how many sleepless, anxious nights he knows Tony has, “I thought you might be.”

Bucky looks up at him at the concern in his voice, and he cards his fingers through soft, long hair again, a comfort.

“Right,” Tony says, almost rueful. “You’ve slept in a bed with me, you remember. Anyway, sure. You need me out there today?” His tone has changed again, and Steve doesn’t push the issue, knows Tony well enough not to.

“As soon as you can get out here,” he says instead.

“I’ll cancel everything,” Tony tells him. “Is there a security issue?”

Steve almost laughs, but it’s not funny. “You could say that.”

“Got it. See you in an hour.”

“I’ll text you the address. And Tony,” he adds quickly before Tony can hang up.

“Yeah.”

Steve wets his lips. He means this next bit more than he can express. “Thank you.”

He hears Tony sniff. But his voice is nothing but level when he answers, “You got it, Cap.”

When Tony Stark says he’ll be there in an hour, he means it. The man has never been stymied by something as inconsequential as New York City traffic patterns. But Bucky was absolutely right, and they _both_ desperately need a shower, so as soon as Steve hangs up, Bucky pulls him into the bathroom, and turns on the tap.

The _intention_ , Bucky clearly lays out at the beginning of the shower, is to get _clean,_ and get _out_. “No funny business,” is the term he genuinely uses, pointing one finger in Steve’s grinning face. But he doesn’t try to put a stop to things when Steve draws him into his arms, and leans him back against his chest under the spray. And he doesn’t say no when Steve reaches around him, and starts stroking his hard-yet-again cock. And indeed, he ends up with his hands braced against the wall and Steve braced against his back and mouthing at his shoulder, biting out, _yes, god, yes!_ as he paints the shower tile with his third load of the morning.

And maybe Bucky’s legs _are_ pretty wobbly afterward, but it’s no matter. Because Steve holds him upright, and covers him in kisses, until Bucky turns around in his arms, and sinks to his knees. And then _Steve_ is the one having trouble standing on shaking knees as Bucky proves himself a practiced maestro, and worthy match for Steve Dick-Sucking Rogers.

Out of the shower, and thoroughly afterglowing, as Bucky does something fascinating and perplexing with a t-shirt and his own wet hair in the bathroom, Steve grabs his phone again, and makes another call.

“Is he okay?” Nat asks as soon as she picks up the phone, forgoing anything resembling a greeting.

But Steve doesn’t blame her at all. He’d do exactly the same. “Yeah,” he tells her, “he’s okay. He’s fine, he’s here.”

Nat lets out a huff of air, undisguisedly relieved. “Thank god,” she mutters. And she’s so rarely this plain about her emotions, but Steve knows exactly how much she cares about Bucky. He can relate.

But then, all at once, her voice goes sharp as she snaps, “You could have called last night. I was left to just _assume_ you’d found him and made up, and hope to _god_ it wasn’t that you were in some dark grieving place, you dick.”

Steve winces. He can endure a tongue-lashing from Natasha Romanoff — has, in fact, countless times — but she’s right. He should have called her last night.

“I’m sorry,” he tells her now, sincere. “You’re right. I totally forgot, and that’s not okay, I’m sorry.”

Nat _hmph_ s, but doesn’t keep scolding him, which means she accepts his apology. “So you’re with him?” she asks, still a little curt. “He’s okay, and you’re with him?”

“He’s okay, and I’m with him,” Steve confirms.

“And you forgot to call me because you two were…making up?”

Steve smiles at the innuendo. “Yeah,” he says, “we were making up. And fucking.”

“Jesus Christ,” Nat complains. “That’s not something I need to hear about my _ex_ and the guy who might as well be my _brother_ , thanks very much.”

“You don’t want to hear about how many times I’ve made him come so far?” Steve asks innocently, and Nat yells wordlessly on the phone while a towel hits Steve in the back. He turns to flash a cheeky grin at Bucky, who’s scowling at him from a few feet away, his curls now damp and scrunched instead of dripping wet. “It’s five, by the way.”

“ _STEVE!_ ” Bucky and Nat both yell at him, twin voices of indignation in each ear. This is fun.

“Is that Natalia?” Bucky asks.

_Natalia_. The apparently formal version of her name sounds so weird to Steve, connected to his best friend. And Bucky says it with a slight accent, which is _deeply_ sexy, it turns out.

Steve nods. “You want to talk to her?”

“Put her on speaker?” Bucky asks instead.

“Nat, Buck wants to talk to you, too. You okay if I put you on speaker?”

“Lemme talk to him!” Nat whines, making Steve laugh.

“Okay, okay,” he relents, pulling the phone from his ear to switch the call to speakerphone.

As soon as he has, Bucky says, in a deep rumble, something in Russian that sounds like, “Privet, Natashenka.”

Nat makes a cute squeak of joy on the other end. “Yashechka!” she cries. “ _Fuck_ , it’s good to hear your voice!”

“Yours, too,” Bucky says, a sweet look of wistful fondness alight throughout his features. “I’m so sorry, dorogaya, I thought—”

“Idi nahui,” Nat cuts him off sharply, and Bucky stops. “Steve told me that asshole found you in _our_ office, of _course_ you thought I was involved. Would have been fucking stupid if you didn’t, Solnishko, you were protecting yourself, don’t fucking apologize for that.”

Bucky glances at Steve, the corner of his mouth quirked fondly. Steve smiles, and wonders if this is how they used to be when they were together. If Nat used to scold him lovingly, while he smiled softly to himself, and loved her. He thinks it must have been, the way Bucky looks now. _Just like old times_ , his expression clearly says.

“I’m gonna rip his dick off,” Nat continues viciously, and Bucky’s eyes actually crinkle, his smile spreads across his face. “If I’d have known, Yasha, he’d already be dead. You know that?”

“I do now,” Bucky tells her. “I did then, too, I was just afraid.”

“The things he did to you,” Nat growls, and Steve relates to _this_ , too. “Baby, I’m gonna—”

“Okay, maybe don’t incriminate yourself over an unsecured line, huh?” Bucky laughs, but there’s an edge to his voice. He’s serious.

Nat sighs sharply. “Fine,” she agrees, clearly hearing it, too. “I’m coming over?”

“That’s why I called,” Steve says, rejoining the conversation. “I need you to bring me some stuff.”

“Are you gonna do it, then?”

“Yeah,” Steve confirms. He went over everything with her before he came to talk to Bucky yesterday, she knows his plan. “Can you do me a favor and call Sam? He can grab my bag, and maybe you can both come over so we can say bye?”

Nat chuckles softly, almost to herself. “I’m sitting right next to Sam,” she says, and for some reason she sounds amused. “I’m at your place right now.”

“Oh,” Steve says, frowning slightly. He hadn’t expected that. Nat and Sam are friends outside of their individual relationships with him by now, and he knows that, but for some reason, he didn’t think Nat would be hanging out with Sam _at his apartment_ without him. He feels, absurdly, a little left out. “Okay great, then you don’t have to call him.”

Bucky is looking at Steve again, shrewdly. Steve feels kind of like he’s the only one not in on some joke here, and he doesn’t particularly like it.

It doesn’t matter, though, he doesn’t have time to figure this out right now. Tony’s going to be here any minute. Also, Nat is talking again.

“Have you talked to Fury yet?” she asks.

“No,” Steve answers, “not yet. I called you first.”

“Good,” Nat says. “Call Fury next.”

“Yes, Mom,” Steve replies, rolling his eyes. “Definitely wouldn’t have thought of _calling my boss_ to tell him I’m going out of town without your help,” he adds sarcastically.

Natasha _tsks_ over the phone. “Sam and I’ll be there in a few, okay?”

“Actually, can you hold off for thirty or forty minutes?” Steve asks quickly before Nat can say goodbye. “Tony’s gonna be here any minute.”

Nat doesn’t say anything for a second, and Steve is confused about _this_ now, too, because Nat has always _liked_ Tony, so what the _fuck_ is going on here? But then Bucky laughs at his furrowed brow, and says, “Not for sex,” into the phone, and Steve turns bright red.

“Thank _fuck_ ,” Nat says. Steve can hear Sam laughing in the background. “I _especially_ do not need to hear about my ex and my brother having a threesome with my _friend_.”

“Eh, fuck you,” Steve laughs. “I’ve heard worse about you and your hookups.”

Nat just laughs brightly in a way that definitely sounds a little maniacal. “See you in an hour, babe,” she says. “Yashechka, ya tebya lyublyu.”

“Ya tozhe tyebya lyublyu, Natashenka,” Bucky replies. “See you soon.”

And Natasha hangs up.

Steve looks at Bucky, who smiles back at him.

“What?” Bucky asks at Steve’s look.

“Two things,” Steve tells him, smirking. “One: you and Nat are adorable,” he says, and Bucky laughs shyly, rolling his eyes and turning vaguely pink, which makes Steve want to absolutely _cover_ him in kisses. “And two,” he continues, lowering his voice, and reaching out to pull Bucky into his arms, circling them around Bucky’s waist, “every time you speak Russian, all I wanna do is fuck you _stupid_.”

Bucky’s grin is huge and gorgeous. “Yeah?” he asks. Steve nods vigorously.

“ _Very_ yeah,” he confirms, leaning forward to press his lips to Bucky’s jawline.

“Well, then,” Bucky sighs, tilting his head to give Steve better access, “ya lyublyu tyebya fsyem syertsem, Stevie.”

Steve shivers. He doesn’t _know_ what it means, but he has an idea. He growls into the curve of Bucky’s shoulder, biting down.

“Ya lyublyu tyebya fsyei dushoj,” Bucky breathes. “Ty nuzhen mnye. Ya nye magu zhit' byes tyebya, lyubimyj.”

“Fucking _Christ_ , honey,” Steve gasps, rolling his hips and his half-hard cock against Bucky’s before he seals their lips together.

And, because they have the worst cock-blocking luck in the entire fucking world, it is precisely this moment that a knock sounds loudly on Bucky’s front door.

Bucky laughs brightly as Steve groans and tilts his head back, eyes squeezed shut as he tries to will his erection away.

While he does this, Bucky steps out of his arms, and goes to answer the door.

Steve… _adjusts_ himself, and follows.

When he gets out into Bucky’s living room, Bucky is holding the door open while Tony enters, babbling some nonsense or other at Bucky, despite having met him mere seconds ago. But Steve is distracted from snarking at Tony about this by the man who follows him inside.

“Ed!” Steve gasps, both stunned and delighted to see this tall, lanky British man he used to know so fucking well. He rushes over to pull a grinning Edwin Jarvis into a hug. “Tony didn’t tell me you were coming!”

“No?” Jarvis asks, pulling back from the hug and cocking an eyebrow. “How very impolite.”

“Hey!” Tony shouts in protest while Steve laughs.

“ _God_ , it’s good to see you,” he tells Jarvis, completely ignoring the way Tony’s mouth is opening and closing like a codfish. “It’s been—”

“Ages,” Jarvis agrees. “Yes. It’s rather good to see you too, Steve. Although I’m told the circumstances could be cheerier.”

“Better than the last time,” Steve points out, his smile turning sad.

Jarvis nods, the same bittersweet smile on his face. “Indeed,” he says. The last time they saw each other was four years ago, at the funeral.

Certainly unhappy that he’s not the center of attention, Tony turns to Bucky.

“Hi,” he says pointedly, reaching out to shake Bucky’s hand. “You must be Bucky. Since I have to _guess_.” He shoots that icily towards Steve and Ed, and scoffs. “And _I’m_ the rude one.”

“Yes, Mr. Stark,” Jarvis tells him in that polite deadpan that Steve has always so appreciated from him, “as usual, you are correct.”

Tony turns slowly to glare at Ed, and Steve tries and fails to stifle a snort. Bucky politely holds his in.

“This is Jarvis,” Tony tells Bucky flatly, “my ‘valet,’ aka my head of security.”

Steve watches the almost imperceptible look of dubiousness flash across Bucky’s face as he glances over towards Jarvis. He can almost hear Bucky’s voice in his head saying, ‘ _Head of security? This British bean pole?_ ’

At least Steve does a better job of not outwardly laughing at _that_.

“Unless,” Tony is still talking, “of course, you’re Captain Noble over here, who is apparently the only person outside of Jarvis’ immediate family who gets to call him ‘Ed’.”

Jarvis fixes Tony with an openly unamused look. “Captain _Rogers_ ,” he says pointedly, “was involved with my sister for nearly eight years, Mr. Stark, Steve practically _is_ my immediate family.”

“You’ve been working for me for over eight years!” Tony protests.

“That is not _remotely_ the same thing, Tony,” Steve admonishes dryly. Jarvis turns a warm smile toward him.

Suddenly, Tony looks very concerned, and quietly asks Jarvis, “Do you want me to invite you over more?”

“Buck,” Steve says, turning to his very patient boyfriend, “Ed’s Peggy’s older brother.”

“I figured as much,” Bucky replies, smiling as he reaches out to shake Jarvis’s hand, too.

“Because you know you’re welcome any time!” Tony continues as though no one else has spoken since he last did.

“Step brother, really,” Jarvis clarifies to Bucky, still ignoring Tony, “but that hardly made any difference to us.”

Bucky nods, understanding. “Steve told me about Peggy,” he says, “she sounds like an extraordinary woman. I’m so sorry for your loss.”

“She was,” Jarvis agrees. “And thank you. Mr. Stark, please stop pouting, you know I’m very fond of you as well.”

Tony grins.

And the acknowledgment seems to be what Tony needed, in the end, because he claps his hands together and asks, “Let’s get on with it, then, yeah?”

It’s very fleeting, but Bucky glances over at Steve with a slightly panicked look on his face before his expression neutralizes out again. But Steve isn’t about to make Bucky face anything he isn’t ready for, and besides, Tony is _his_ friend, so he speaks up, and starts explaining what’s going on. He leaves out as many details as he can while still conveying the necessary information, but he tells Tony and Ed about how Bucky was kidnapped at a young age by a terrorist organization and imprisoned for years, how he got out, and how they’re coming for him again. He mentions the brainwashing briefly, but leaves out the parts where they made Bucky kill for them, since he suspects Bucky may not want random strangers knowing about that part.

As he explains, Bucky and Jarvis take seats across from each other at Bucky’s dining table, and Tony sits directly on the table next to Jarvis, angled back a little so he can look at Steve, who stands beside Bucky, one hand solidly on his shoulder in case he needs the physical demonstration of support.

“So, we need to get Bucky out of here, and somewhere safe,” Steve finishes. “And I’m going with him. They know we used to date. They shouldn’t know that we’re back together now, but six to one, I’ll be the first person they check, if they’re not already keeping an eye on me.”

“I’d say the latter option is the likelier,” Jarvis says, jotting something down in a small notebook he pulled from the inside pocket of his suit jacket. He’s been taking notes in it the whole time Steve has been speaking. “Groups like these tend to have eyes everywhere, if you’ll pardon the expression.”

Tony furrows his brow, and turns over his shoulder to Bucky. “You think they’ve got eyes on your bank accounts?” he asks him.

Bucky nods. “I think there’s an extremely high probability they’ve got eyes on every aspect of my life,” he answers, giving voice to a deeply alarming thought very matter-of-factly.

“Including your person?” Jarvis asks, still writing.

“No,” Bucky replies, sure. “They don’t have a tail on me, not yet.”

Jarvis looks up at him at that, eyebrows raised. “You seem incredibly certain about that,” he remarks.

“I am.” Bucky tells him simply. “I’m not currently being watched.”

Jarvis frowns just slightly. “And how, precisely, would you be able to tell with such accuracy?” he asks. “You say they are the best.”

“They are,” Bucky confirms. “But I’d be able to tell.”

“How?”

Bucky pauses a moment, and Steve glances at Tony. He doesn’t like how challenging Jarvis is being toward Bucky. Ed may be family to Steve, but his instincts to protect Bucky are shifting into overdrive at the way he’s grilling him like this. But Tony seems to have silently given up the reins to Jarvis as soon as he started asking questions, and his eyes remain on the interrogation at hand.

And Bucky doesn’t flinch away, however much Steve aches to protect him in this moment. He just straightens in his seat, looks Jarvis dead in the eye, and says, “Because when I was with them, I was the best tail they’d ever had.”

Tony finally looks up at Steve at that, eyebrows raised in surprise at the reveal that Bucky _worked_ with Hydra, and wasn’t just imprisoned by them. But Jarvis’ face remains neutral, and he doesn’t break eye contact as Bucky continues, “I know their secrets. I’d be able to tell.”

Jarvis tilts his head. “And how long have you been away from Hydra, Mr. Barnes?” he asks.

“Almost fourteen years.”

“You don’t believe there is the slightest possibility, then, that they have revised their tactics in the fourteen years since you were their best? Or perhaps found someone better than you were?”

“No.” Bucky doesn’t look upset or angry with Jarvis at all. Just calm. Just quietly sure.

“And why not?” Jarvis presses.

“I know _their_ secrets,” Bucky says plainly. “They didn’t know mine.”

Jarvis is silent for a moment, watching Bucky with an assessing gaze. Bucky doesn’t look away, matches Ed’s stare with a firmly solid one of his own. He’s here, confessing something he’s been hiding for years, and facing a challenge to his own experience, and he hasn’t flinched, not once. He’s not upset, and he’s not confrontational, he’s just sure. Confident.

Bucky is the strongest person Steve has ever known, and Steve is so in love with him.

Finally, Jarvis nods. “Very well,” he says, like he’s come to a conclusion. “In that case, since you are so familiar with their work, and since you yourself are highly skilled in disappearing: why is it you need Mr. Stark’s help?”

Bucky’s eyes narrow just a little. An assessing gaze of his own. “It doesn’t seem like I’m _asking_ for Mr. Stark’s help, so much as I am asking for _yours_ , Mr. Jarvis,” he says, and for the first time, there’s an edge to his voice. He’s challenging Jarvis right back.

Which makes the corners of Jarvis’ mouth twitch, almost like he’s proud. Almost like he’s enjoying it. Steve knows him well enough to suspect that probably he is.

“The question,” he says slowly, “Mr. Barnes, remains.”

It’s Bucky who takes a beat this time. He wets his lips, and it looks like he’s making up his mind. Steve watches the decision be made in the glint in his eyes right before he opens his mouth to answer.

“When I was fifteen years old,” Bucky begins frankly, “Hydra kidnapped me from my bed in Wakanda, with my parents in the room next door.”

Jarvis’ face is finally shaken from his neutral expression at that, breaking open in honest surprise.

Bucky just continues on. “While I was under their control, I wasn’t a person,” he says. “They scrubbed everything about _me_ from me, and filled me with _them_ instead. Outside of them, I didn’t exist. Save,” he allows like it’s just occurring to him, “I guess, for a missing persons file, and the pictures my parents kept on the walls in their house.” He wets his lips again. “I can hide, yes. Damn well, even. But I can’t disappear, not anymore. I’ve got a few things now that I never had until after I escaped them. Namely, a paper trail, and a lot of people who will notice I’m gone. They never taught me how to get around that,” he concludes. And then, like an afterthought, “They never needed to.”

When Bucky is finished, he and Jarvis just hold each other’s gaze for a long, stretched-out moment.

And then, Jarvis nods.

“Very well, Mr. Barnes,” he says, closing his notebook. And just like that, the tension in the room is broken with startling immediacy.

Tony looks at Jarvis, his posture relaxing. Through this whole exchange, he’s been doing that thing he does where he tries to project casual confidence, even though he feels tense. But now he’s genuinely relaxed.

“We good?” he asks Jarvis simply, and Jarvis nods again.

“We are indeed,” he says lightly, and smiles.

But Bucky frowns. “That’s it?” he protests. “Just like that?”

“ _Buck_ ,” Steve chides through his teeth, “he trusts you, don’t _argue_.”

“Jarvis is the best in the game,” Tony explains casually, “If you’re lying, he can tell. Never been wrong, not once. It’s his superpower.”

Bucky turns his scowl back to Jarvis. “Where’d you train?” he asks.

It’s not so much a challenge as it seems to be a true question, and Jarvis seems to take it in the spirit it’s asked, because he shrugs and says, “I didn’t. I’ve always been able to tell, ever since I was a child. Sort of like a sixth sense, if you will.”

“That’s impossible,” Bucky says.

“ _Bucky_ ,” Steve hisses again. They’re asking for help here, and as much as Ed is a truly good person, questioning his methods when he’s decided to trust Bucky can’t be _helping_.

But Bucky shakes his head at Steve, arguing, “No, Hydra had people training to do that for _decades,_ it can’t be done. Not infallibly. Doesn’t matter what you try — heartbeats, breathing, microexpressions — it’s all susceptible to being fooled by someone with enough training.”

Steve blinks, frowning to himself. “Are you telling me _Lie to Me_ lied to me?” he asks Bucky, feeling a little hurt.

And Bucky looks up at him, eyes narrowed incredulously. “The TV show?” he asks. “Yeah, Steve.”

Steve feels deeply betrayed at this revelation. Tony laughs at his pain.

“So, we gonna make plans or not?” he asks when Steve glares at him.

“I’m not sure I’m ready to come down from this divulgence that Steve’s kind-of-brother-in-law has a literal sixth sense,” Bucky objects, still frowning around at everyone, but he stills a little when Steve’s fingers slide into his hair.

“We can talk about it later, okay?” Steve tells him softly, bending down to press a kiss to his forehead. Which seems to placate Bucky even further, as the muscles holding his eyebrows together release. “For now, let’s figure out how we’re gonna get you safe, yeah?”

Bucky huffs in annoyance — undercut deeply by the soft things his face is doing as Steve scritches the back of his head through his hair — but nods.

“When are you leaving?” Tony asks, watching this exchange with something tight around his eyes. Steve makes a mental note to ask him how he’s doing later.

“Whenever we can, I guess,” Steve answers his question as Bucky leans back, possibly unconsciously, into his hand.

“You should leave tonight,” Jarvis says seriously. “Don’t leave the apartment before you go, and head straight out of the city at around two or three in the morning.”

“I can’t— I have to make a stop,” Bucky protests, suddenly sitting up, away from Steve’s hand, and looking alarmed.

“I wouldn’t suggest—” Jarvis begins, but Bucky cuts him off.

“No, I have to go see someone before I leave.”

“Mr. Barnes, that would be extremely unwise—”

“I don’t care,” Bucky says resolutely, “I can’t leave without seeing him, that’s not an option.”

Steve is pretty sure Bucky’s talking about RJ. “Can he come here?” he asks softly, but Bucky shakes his head.

“Not putting him at risk,” he answers, and there’s nothing in his tone that leaves room for compromise.

Jarvis doesn’t look happy, but he sighs. “It is, of course, your decision,” he allows, “but I would _strongly_ advise against it.”

“I understand that, and thank you,” Bucky says, his voice clipped. He doesn’t say, ‘ _But I’m going to do it anyway_ ,’ but that’s pretty clear in his expression.

Tony chuckles, and Steve catches him regarding Bucky with something remarkably close to fondness, which causes a swell of pride inside Steve’s chest. Tony likes Bucky. Steve’s friend approves of his boyfriend.

And then, just as quickly, the expression is gone, and Tony is looking at Steve instead.

“How are you planning on financing this trip of yours?” he asks, all business again.

And, well, Steve hasn’t actually thought about that in too much detail. “Well take cash out, I guess—” he starts, but Tony interrupts him before he can get too far into that idea.

“You do that,” he says, “they’ll be on every bridge and tunnel before you can make it out of the city.”

Steve sighs, already annoyed. “Then I’ll wait till we’re out of town,” he says. He can tell Tony already has a better idea, and isn’t telling him just so he can be a fucking smartass.

“And give them a clue which direction you’re headed in?” Tony retorts, smirking. “Don’t think so. And what happens when you run out of cash, hm?”

Steve narrows his eyes as Tony’s shit-eating grin grows. “Something tells me you got a better idea, Tone?” he prompts flatly.

“You are a very smart man, Steven,” Tony tells him with benevolence. “Not as smart as I am, though.”

Steve rolls his eyes, but Tony isn’t looking at him, because he’s pulled out his phone. He taps the screen a few times as he says, “This is gonna require some trust in me, I’m afraid, but if you guys are willing to do that, I do have a solution.”

Steve looks over at Bucky. He knows he’d trust Tony — with all his bravado, and terrible life decisions when it comes to his own person — with his life, but Bucky doesn’t know him, and Bucky doesn’t trust easily. With good reason, too. Steve hopes that his own faith in Tony will help Bucky feel better about all of this, but if he doesn’t, he’s got every right not to.

And Bucky purses his lips, but he asks, “What’s the solution?”

Tony finishes whatever he’s doing on his phone, and looks up to hold Bucky’s gaze as he addresses him.

“I just finalized a program that’ll allow me to falsify records in your bank accounts, if you give me access to them. No money will actually be leaving your accounts, but the program will make it look like you’re spending the usual amount of money at all the places you usually do, so by all appearances in your accounts, you’ll still be in the area. It’ll even create false spending records at a few local places you’ve never been to, but could conceivably enjoy, based on your past purchases.”

Bucky’s eyes widen underneath furrowed brows. He looks at once disturbed and impressed, a feeling Steve knows well in the presence of Tony Stark.

“How will it do all that?” Bucky asks.

Tony just shrugs. His only reply, “An algorithm.”

That is not an answer, but Steve knows it’s the only one they’re gonna get, so he moves on to _his_ next question, which is: “And how will _we_ get money, then? If money isn’t going to be leaving our accounts? I’m guessing we still won’t be able to go to any ATMs?”

“Of course not,” Tony says like that’s obvious. “The program is a convincing cloaking mechanism, but if you actually take cash out, those assholes’ll no doubt be able to catch that, and learn your location.”

Steve blinks, waiting for the actual answer to his question while Tony just taps on his phone again. “Okay…?” he finally says after a few beats of nothing. “So then—?”

“Jesus, Cap, keep your pants on,” Tony scolds him, still not looking up from his phone, because Tony is infuriating. But then he lands one more decisive tap on his phone, and finally does look up. “I’m giving you access to my bank account,” he tells Steve and Bucky simply. “It’s protected twenty ways from Sunday, so even if they _try_ , Hydra won’t be able to see inside it. Also, I’m very wealthy, so you don’t need to be worried about expenses. You need to charter a plane, you can charter a plane, okay?”

Steve opens his mouth to try to argue with this, but Bucky is already speaking.

“I can’t do that,” he says firmly. “You don’t even know me, I can’t take your money.”

“Yes, you can,” Tony tells him like it’s that simple. “I have a lot of it, I don’t need it all. Steve cares about you, and I care about Steve, and I can help you like this, so I’m gonna. I’ll make sure all of your bills get paid while you’re away, too, both of you, so you won’t lose your apartments or make Sam suddenly have to pay the full rent.”

“Tony, this is really generous,” Steve begins, “but—”

“Hey,” Tony cuts him off, “you wanna pay me back when you get home, we can work something out, okay? For now, just get yourselves somewhere safe, and stay alive and together. That’s my final word on that.”

Steve looks at Bucky, who closes his mouth, looking overwhelmed.

“Thank you,” Bucky finally says after a moment’s silence, his voice soft and small.

Tony swallows and nods. “You’re welcome,” he says gruffly, never great with feelings, then clears his throat as though to prove it. “When we’re all done here, I’ll send someone over with a matching set of debit cards for the two of you, with names to match the extremely realistic fake IDs and passports I’ll also be sending. I’ll be sending you very fancy burner phones as well, that have access to the account. And a car. You two are not making it to Canada on Steve’s bike.”

“Do you have somewhere safe to go?” Jarvis asks, speaking up again now that Tony has finished with the finance talk. “A destination in mind?”

“Not yet,” Steve admits. “This plan came together kind of slapdash, if I’m honest. I just want to get him out of here.”

Jarvis nods, writing in his notebook again. “Don’t go anywhere directly,” he advises. “If you’re going to go to Canada, do _not_ go directly for the border. Zig-zag for a bit first, through multiple states, and retrace your steps more than once. It should take you at _least_ a week to get to Canada, understand?”

“Yes,” Bucky says before Steve can respond, and something about his tone makes Steve think this strategy isn’t new to him. “I’m not planning on making Canada our final destination, though.”

Jarvis actually smiles at that. “No, I wouldn’t,” he agrees. “Do you know how far Hydra’s reach is?”

“Obviously not,” Bucky answer ruefully, “considering I had no fucking clue they were in New York.”

Jarvis jots this down, tilting his head a little in an understanding way. “They may only be here to find you,” he points out.

“No, Rumlow was _way_ too surprised to see me for that to be true,” Bucky says. “If they were looking for me, _he’d_ be the one they sent. He would’ve at least known I _could_ be in New York.”

Steve feels a hot rush of hatred flood through his body at the thought of Brock Rumlow, Bucky’s rapist, his abuser, sent out to find him and bring him back. But that’s what this is now, isn’t it? That’s why they have to run.

“Well,” Jarvis is saying over the rush of blood in Steve’s ears, “either way, I’d avoid Europe as a whole, and probably much of Asia as well, just geographically.”

Bucky nods his agreement. “South America, then?” he asks.

“Or Africa, yes,” Jarvis says. “Australia maybe. Somewhere they’re less likely to have allies and reach. And I’d stay away from making a semi-permanent location out of any particularly small nations.”

Bucky is nodding thoughtfully again, but Steve has been distracted since Jarvis mentioned Africa.

_What about Wakanda?_

He doesn’t mention it just yet, because surely Bucky has already thought of it, and Bucky isn’t voicing the option in front of Tony and Ed. Maybe there’s a reason for that that Steve doesn’t see. So he keeps it to himself until he has a chance to speak to Bucky privately. They’ll have a lot of time for it, after all, if they can’t even leave the U.S. for a week.

They all start to wrap up the conversation now. Jarvis and Bucky go over a few more details in very few words, and overlapping with each other, so that at some point, Steve realizes he genuinely doesn’t know what they’re talking about anymore. Then Tony and Steve hash out a few more logistics — which includes Tony making fun of Steve for thinking that they can make a weeks-long road trip sitting tandem on his bike, and then telling him in no uncertain terms that he _will_ be sending him a car to drive instead — and then, as soon as they came, Jarvis and Tony are gone.

After he closes the door behind them, Steve looks over at Bucky, still sitting at the dining table, and looking so tired. All Steve wants is to squish him up and carry him to bed, where he can sleep for the next few days if he needs to. But Sam and Nat will be here any minute. And they need to run.

He’s about to say something sweet, and hopefully reassuring, to Bucky, but then, as though summoned by Steve’s own thoughts, there’s another knock on the door as Sam and Nat arrive.

Nat bursts through the door before Steve has even opened it all the way, making him actually stumble back with the force of it. And she does not stop to say hello to him, just pushes past him to round the corner and rush to Bucky, who stands up so quickly, his chair clatters to the floor behind him. Nat throws herself into his arms, both of them clinging to each other so tightly, Nat’s feet lift up off the ground.

Sam also enters, albeit slower, and a lot more gently than Nat.

“We passed Ed and Tony in the hall,” he tells Steve after hugging him hello. “Haven’t seen Tony in Brooklyn in over a year. Glad you called him.”

“Yeah,” Steve agrees. “He’s a good guy.”

Sam grins when Steve can’t help but turn back to watch Natasha and Bucky hugging and murmuring to each other in Russian for a moment. Sam even joins Steve in watching them. It’s a sweet sight, the reunion of two people who mean so much to each other. They may have seen each other briefly six weeks ago, but Steve knows it wasn’t under circumstances either of them enjoyed or wanted.

After a moment, Sam lifts the duffel bag he’s carrying off his shoulder, and passes it to Steve.

“Your shit,” he says magnanimously as he does.

Steve chuckles. “Thanks for bringing it,” he tells Sam.

Bucky lowers Nat back onto her feet, and loosens his arms around her, resting his hands on her waist instead. She takes his face between her hands, and says something in Russian that makes him laugh, bright and happy. He’s so fucking beautiful, and Steve loves him so much.

Steve glances over at Sam, because he _knows_ his face is doing that gooey, love-struck thing that Sam teased him about relentlessly the first time he and Bucky were together, and he’s ready for the teasing that’s inevitably about to come. But then he sees Sam’s face, and _Sam is making the gooey, love-struck face, too_.

For one wild moment, Steve wonders how the hell Sam fell in love with Bucky when they only met each other for ten minutes once — until the obvious hits him in the face.

“You guys are _dating?!”_ he screeches, and his suspicion is instantly confirmed by the way Nat spins around, and Sam’s entire face goes slack and wide at being caught.

“We were gonna tell you!” Sam shouts at once, which retroactively makes Steve worried about what would have happened if he were ever captured in combat during his military days.

“How long has this been a thing?!” Steve demands, more flabbergasted than upset. How did he not _see this?!_

“Since about a week before Bucky dumped you,” Nat says bluntly, and Bucky winces guiltily behind her.

Oh. That’s how.

“We didn’t want to make you feel worse by parading our new relationship in front of you,” Natasha explains more gently.

“Are you mad at us?” Sam asks, looking very contrite indeed.

Steve kind of gapes between them for a moment. “Am I—?” he starts. “No! No, I’m not mad at— I’m _happy_ for you, Christ.” He pulls Sam into a hug, then reaches for Nat to give her one, too. “Are you kidding? You guys are my best friends, all I _want_ is for you to be happy.”

He catches sight of Bucky over Nat’s shoulder, watching him, and smiling softly. Steve feels a rush of warmth like sunlight through his entire body. He lets go of Natasha, and smiles back.

When Steve turns back to Nat and Sam, he catches the end of a soft look between them, their arms around each other, and his heart swells. He isn’t mad that they kept this from him — he never was, he was only baffled that he didn’t see it before — and seeing the two of them smile at each other, Nat with her head tilted all the way back to look up at Sam, whose face is etched with the most tender affection Steve has ever seen on him, well, it’s fucking beautiful, is what it is.

As Steve watches his two best friends in the world look incredibly happy together, Bucky appears at his side. Steve loops his arm around Bucky’s waist automatically, and Bucky’s arms both snake around his shoulders, his face presses into his neck. He feels home, like this. Bucky feels like home.

“I love you so much, Stevie,” Bucky murmurs into Steve’s skin, soft enough that only he can hear, and Steve smiles as he turns to press a kiss to Bucky’s forehead.

“I love you, too, Buck,” he replies, slipping his other arm around Bucky, too. He can feel the way Bucky’s lips curl against his collarbone. “So _fucking_ much.”

Finally, after allowing himself a minute to just bathe in this moment with his love, Steve looks up to Sam’s and Nat’s smiles shining in their direction. They look exactly as happy for him and Bucky as Steve is for them. Steve loves them so much. Loves Bucky so fucking much. Loves this moment, however brief it may be, of standing here, surrounded by all the people he loves most in the world.

He hopes, with everything in him, that it won’t be too terribly long before he’ll get to come back home with Bucky, and have this again.

And then Nat clears her throat, and just like that, the spell is broken. Bucky lifts his head from Steve’s neck, and steps out of his arms, lacing their fingers together instead. Sam lets go of Nat entirely, which Steve knows is because Nat is still uncomfortable with public displays of affection with a significant other. She’ll drape herself all over Steve no matter who’s watching, but kissing and holding hands and the like with someone she actually cares about romantically is a whole different story.

He’s pulled from his thoughts as Nat begins to talk to him.

“I stopped by the office on the way here, and talked to Fury for you,” she says. “He wants you to call him to confirm, but he won’t ask for details.”

“What did you tell him?” Steve asks, because, though he trusts that Nat most likely told him almost nothing at all, he felt Bucky minutely stiffen beside him at the idea that Nat might have told someone else he doesn’t know about what’s going on.

But: “Just that you need some time off for sensitive personal reasons,” Nat answers, and Bucky relaxes again. It’s barely perceptible, but Steve feels it. “It’s Fury, he doesn’t ask for much when he can tell it’s important.”

Steve nods. That is Fury, all right.

“When are you leaving?” Sam asks him and Bucky.

“Middle of the night,” Bucky answers before Steve can.

“Two a.m.-ish?” Natasha asks, smirking, and Bucky laughs again, that beautiful sound.

“Yeah, around then,” Bucky confirms.

“What do you guys still have to do?” Sam asks.

“Bucky still has to pack,” Steve begins.

“Aw, fuck, I do.”

“And I have to call Fury,” Steve adds. “Other than that? Wait.”

Sam and Nat exchange a look before Sam asks, “Mind if we hang around for a bit, then?”

“I’ll help you pack, James,” Nat says, and for some reason, that makes Bucky laugh louder than before.

“I take that as a threat,” he tells her jovially, “but fine. Thank you.”

Nat grins like a shark, and turns on her heel, going off to hunt for Bucky’s bedroom without being pointed in its direction. Bucky, still laughing, follows after her.

When they’ve both disappeared, Steve looks over at Sam, his eyebrows raised.

Sam sees and understands the question on his face, and shrugs. “We’re gonna miss you like hell,” he explains simply. “We both totally understand why you’re going, and we think you’re doing the right thing, standing by the guy you love, trying to keep him safe. But we’re gonna miss you like hell.”

Steve blinks, a small, sad smile playing at his lips. “I’m gonna miss you like hell, too,” he tells Sam softly. “It’s hard, leaving you guys. But—”

“But not _that_ hard,” Sam finishes for him with a knowing smile, “because you love him. You’d do anything for him.”

Steve glances toward Bucky’s bedroom door, listening to the bright laughter and maniacal chuckling that’s floating out of it from Bucky and Nat, respectively, and nods.

Sam doesn’t know how right he is. Steve would do _anything_ for Bucky. He would give up _anything_. Everything.

Steve would lose _everything,_ willingly and happily, if it meant Bucky had a chance to be happy. And the intensity of that truth—

It terrifies him.

🎈

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **Next time:**   
> 


	12. Twelve: November 19th

After Natasha makes quick work of packing up Bucky’s things, and after Bucky has spent an hour on the phone, finding people to cover his sessions and his work at the center, and after Steve _insists_ that _he_ will make everyone lunch, and that Bucky should go sit down and relax because, “I’m your man,” he proclaims again, Bucky finds himself wedged into the corner of his own plush sofa, with Nat tucked under his arm, her legs curled up under herself and her head leaning against his shoulder. Sam is on her other side, chatting amiably with Bucky while she does this, and Bucky is mildly surprised, but wholeheartedly glad, that Sam seems to have absolutely no issue with his new-ish girlfriend snuggling up like this with her ex-boyfriend. It’s been a very long time since Bucky and Nat were in love, but their relationship was deeply significant to both of them. Cuddling like this still feels natural and wanted to him, but Bucky would understand if Sam wasn’t comfortable with it, given his and Nat’s history.

Apparently, though, Sam’s not uncomfortable at all. Because as Nat pokes at Bucky’s ribs like she’s trying to determine if he’s been eating enough (which, to be fair, he definitely hasn’t for the last six weeks, his appetite just nonexistent for most of that time), Sam is telling Bucky a selection of _deeply_ hilarious and incriminating stories about Bucky’s new-again boyfriend, the subject of which keeps yelling protests from the kitchen, but has yet to actually _deny_ a single claim Sam has made about him.

And Bucky has _missed_ this. Company. Companionship. People in his house who aren’t just RJ. Bucky loves RJ with his whole heart, don’t get him wrong, but he also feels deeply responsible for the kid. He wants to protect and support RJ like a son, and he adores hanging out with him, but it’s different feeling like he’s around… _friends_.

Bucky doesn’t really have friends of his own. Not these days, not anymore. He hasn’t had real friends since the Commandos, and he’s fallen out of touch with all of them. He’s fallen out of touch with his family, and with T’Challa. It hurts to realize that, though not consciously, he did that entirely on purpose.

For years, Bucky’s been pushing people away, keeping everyone at arm’s length, maintaining strictly professional relationships with almost everyone, because he’s been so scared of getting hurt, and so ashamed of what he’s done. Steve came in nearly four months ago, and barreled through all of those walls, Kool-Aid Man style.

And Bucky will never be able to repay him for that.

He’s missed Natasha, especially, Bucky thinks as she cackles at the story Sam is telling. Losing her all those years ago was a physical pain that has never truly healed, and even though the romantic feelings he used to have for her have long faded, the deep love he feels for her never has. She was his rock, and his salvation, and he was hers. That’s not a bond that time can just erase. Now that she’s back in his life, it’s like a weight from his chest — one that he’s become so accustomed to, he forgot it was there, weighing him down — has lifted. Despite everything that’s going on, right now, Bucky feels right. He feels whole.

He has Steve, and he has Nat, and Sam is already treating Bucky like his friend, too, and not just his best friend’s boyfriend, and Bucky just…feels whole.

When Steve comes out with sandwiches for everyone, Nat gets up unprompted from under Bucky’s arm, and switches to Sam’s other side so Steve can sit next to Bucky instead.

Steve picks up the conversation with Sam while they eat, which Bucky is grateful for, because for some reason, as he watches Steve laugh with his friends, he’s struck by it: how impossibly he loves this man.

Bucky never even knew he had the _capacity_ to love this much. So much that he’s overflowing with it, bursting with it, at every moment. The only person he’s ever been in love with before was Nat, and that was so different. They were both so stunted by years of abuse, and torture, and being treated as less than human. So _lost_. And they tried so hard to love each other well, but they both barely felt like people for so much of their time together. They didn’t even know who they were themselves, let alone how to be good partners to each other. They’d been so fresh out of years and years of having every emotion or expression stamped out of them, and Bucky had loved her as much as he could at the time, but he just couldn’t love her enough.

Not like this, anyway, not like he loves Steve. He _knows_ who he is, now. He’s built a life for himself, and he’s been content to keep living it the way he’s become used to — drifting through, focusing on his work to keep from focusing on his loneliness, always finding an excuse to leave, to end things whenever anyone started to get too close. Just keeping his head down, trying to stay under the radar. He had no idea, really — none at _all_ — how much he’d been missing. How much darkness there still was in his life. Until Steve Rogers walked into that bar, locked eyes with him, and lit up his entire fucking life.

Almost like he can feel Bucky’s eyes on him, Steve turns and smiles warmly at him. And maybe he recognizes the deep love welling up in Bucky’s eyes, because he leans in, and kisses him softly. Just a brush of lips, but there’s so much in it, so much unsaid. So much that Bucky understands anyway.

It’s like that Tom Waits song, Bucky thinks wildly, when Steve pulls back enough that he can look up at him again with everything in his heart surely fully visible in his eyes. _I love you, baby, and I always will_. Always, always. Forever.

Bucky is pulled from his reverie, and Steve’s unendingly blue eyes, when his phone buzzes in his pocket. Steve kisses his cheek, and then goes back to eating his sandwich and bullshitting with Sam and Natasha. Meanwhile, Bucky pulls out his phone to check his new text, a response to one he sent RJ an hour or so ago:

**[Bucky (11:19am)]** hey kid. how are the roommates? gonna let you sleep tonight? 🤞

He knows RJ didn’t sleep well the past two nights because his roommates were partying. Bucky actually offered, yesterday at work, to have RJ stay over tonight if he needs to. Now, that’s not an option anymore. But he didn’t want to outright tell RJ he couldn’t come over, especially over text, where it could possibly be intercepted. He was trying to gauge if RJ actually is planning on coming over, and if not, if he’s going to be home at around two in the morning, when Bucky plans on showing up to tell him he’s leaving.

Thankfully, Bucky gets the answer to both without having to manipulate the conversation further.

**[RJ (12:51pm)]** god i hope so. i’m fckin beat. can’t come over tonight tho, i’m closing the center n then i have to stay later bc paperwork n then early am meeting ugh

**[RJ (12:51pm)]** sry. 10 blocks is too far to go at 1am 😕

Bucky feels bad that RJ is dealing with all of that, and the loud, paternal part of him wishes he could just scoop RJ up and forcibly swaddle him until he falls asleep, then yell at the managers of the center for giving him too much work — even though Bucky knows for sure that RJ has taken on all of this completely voluntarily. But he’s also relieved to know that RJ isn’t going to try to come here tonight, where it might not be safe, _and_ that he’ll be home and likely awake when Bucky comes to talk to him. He types out a quick response.

**[Bucky (12:53pm)]** no worries pal. try to get some sleep and maybe lay up a little on work next week?

He almost tells RJ to call him tomorrow if he needs to, but Bucky’s about to abandon this phone, and even though it would help his cover, he can’t bring himself to give RJ a reassurance that he’ll just have to rip away later tonight. So he deletes that final sentiment, and hits send.

Sam and Nat end up sticking around for a few more hours. A messenger arrives from Tony Stark at around half past three with Stark phones, debit cards, and fake driver’s licenses and passports for both Bucky and Steve. Steve’s new identity is Christopher Elwood Bradley, Bucky’s is Sebastian Levi Holland.

“How does Tony Stark know I’m part Jewish?” Bucky asks Steve, eyes narrowed, as he inspects his new identification. They’re _very_ impressive fakes.

Steve shrugs, frowning at his new passport. “How does Tony Stark know anything?” he responds unhelpfully, then seems to actually register Bucky’s question because he looks up with a sweetly curious expression on his face. “You’re part Jewish?”

Bucky laughs. “Yeah, on my mom’s side,” he says.

“Sorry, you dated him for _how_ long and you didn’t know that?” Sam asks from the peanut gallery on the couch.

Steve’s mouth pops open like a fish. “I didn’t—!” he begins to squeak defensively while Bucky cracks up even harder.

“I was intentionally very vague about my family and background,” Bucky says through his cackle, coming to Steve’s defense. “It’s not his fault, I’m just a master at deflection.”

Sam _hmph_ s, evidently not totally convinced, as he continues to give Steve the Stink Eye of Judgement.

“Okay,” Steve says, pushing past this subject, “but why does _my_ new name make me sound like a fucking British lord? Christopher Elwood? What the fuck?”

“You guys have a story yet?” Natasha asks.

Bucky shakes his head. “Not yet, we’ll have to work it out on the way.”

“Say you’re married,” Nat suggests. “People have less questions for married couples and business partners.”

“Yeah, I remember,” Bucky agrees. He and Nat used pretty much every cover story they could while they were on the run, just out of Hydra, and they always got the least amount of attention when they said they were husband and wife. Although he does wonder if it’ll be different this time, since he and Steve are both men, and therefore obviously queer.

“Don’t even _try_ for business partners,” Sam warns, “no one on _earth_ would believe you two aren’t deeply fucking in love.”

Steve laughs. “Also, that might raise questions when we rent single-bed motel rooms,” he points out. “I’m not a fucking idiot, Sam.”

“But you’ve never gone undercover,” Sam points out right back.

Bucky looks at Steve. “You haven’t?” For some reason, he’d figured Steve had at least _some_ experience doing undercover work as a cop.

“No,” Steve confirms, “not really. I’ve posed as a drug dealer once or twice, but never for more than like, one conversation.”

Bucky’s face involuntarily pulls into a frown at that. He’d figured Steve was involved in things like drug busts during his time in the police force, but hearing the confirmation of that is jarring to him. Steve notices his expression, and winces guiltily, reaching out to brush Bucky’s elbow with a finger before immediately withdrawing his hand again, as though Bucky might not want his touch. As though that would ever be the case.

Bucky quietly takes Steve’s hand in his, and squeezes. He knows how Steve feels about his time with the police force, and the things he did to contribute to inequality and disenfranchisement. Steve has spent all of the years since he quit trying to loudly call attention to those exact issues through his writing. Bucky has no intention of trying to add to his guilt. It’s just that Bucky’s job, and the kids he works with, as well as his own past with drugs, make him ultra-attuned to these things. Thinking of his wonderful, kind boyfriend lying in wait to try to lock up some poor addicts doesn’t make him feel great.

Steve still looks contrite, and pulls on Bucky’s hand a little to bring him closer, kissing his temple.

“Rogers,” Nat calls over, standing up off the sofa, and beckoning Steve to follow her into Bucky’s kitchen, “come here, let me give you a crash course in espionage.”

Steve doesn’t move, not even as Nat walks into the kitchen. He just watches Bucky’s face. And Bucky melts for him. He smiles, and ducks in to kiss Steve’s mouth, hoping that it conveys to him that Bucky isn’t mad at him. Not at all. Steve squeezes his hand, smiling back at him when Bucky pulls away, and then follows Nat into the kitchen.

When they’re both gone, Bucky looks over at Sam, who gives him a charming, gap-toothed smile.

“Sorry I’m taking him away,” Bucky says, wincing guiltily, but Sam just laughs.

“You’re not taking him away,” he says. “He’s taking _you_ away. When he sets his mind to something, he can’t be stopped. He’d do anything for you, you know that, right?”

Bucky ducks his head to hide his smile. “Yeah,” he replies, circling around the sofa to sit next to Sam. “Yeah, I’m starting to realize that.”

Sam looks at him appraisingly for a moment before he says, “He really loves you. Like, an annoying amount.”

Bucky laughs. “I _really_ love him, too.”

“Glad to hear it,” Sam says, grinning. “You make him insanely happy.”

Bucky sighs. “I made him insanely _sad_ a few weeks ago.”

Sam fixes him with a look. “If I had to guess, based on the way you look at him, I’d figure you were pretty sad, too.”

Bucky scrunches his face against his own blush. “He deserves better than me.”

“Doesn’t he get to make that choice?”

Sam is absolutely unrepentant when Bucky cuts his eyes to glare sideways at him. “You’re irritatingly good at that,” Bucky protests, and Sam shrugs rakishly.

“Mental health professional to mental health professional,” Sam says. “If he thinks you’re worth it, don’t you think he deserves the dignity of his choice?”

“I’m beginning to dislike you,” Bucky says, though he means the exact opposite.

Sam grins.

Natasha is not an outwardly emotional person. She doesn’t like showing her hand, or admitting anything she might consider weakness. Still, she hugs Bucky and Steve individually for over a minute each when she and Sam have to leave. However, she doesn’t cry.

Steve, on the other hand, does.

After Bucky closes the door behind Sam and Natasha, Steve ducks into the bathroom to go blow his nose. Bucky starts to follow him, trying not to openly giggle with intense fondness, but then stops short as he passes his upright piano.

And suddenly, it hits him.

He’s leaving. He’s leaving _everything_.

Bucky lifts open the fallboard, and runs his hand lightly over the keys without pressing down or triggering the action. He hasn’t even played since he broke up with Steve. And now he won’t get a chance for who knows how long.

This little upright may just be an instrument — merely a piece of furniture to some, even — but she means a lot to Bucky. She represents a _lot_. Playing her, back when he first got her, when he was new to New York, was like learning to be himself again.

It won’t be forever. Bucky tries to believe that.

“You okay?” Steve asks, emerging from the bedroom and coming up to wrap his arms around Bucky from behind.

Bucky nods. “Yeah,” he lies. “Just thinking.”

Steve presses a soft kiss to his face, then hooks his chin over Bucky’s shoulder.

“I still haven’t heard you play,” he murmurs.

Which is what does it. Bucky’s face crumples as tears sprout in his eyes.

Steve just holds him tighter. Just presses more kisses against his cheek and jaw and neck, and lets him cry. Even after everything — even after telling Steve about all he’s been through, all that was done to him — Steve doesn’t treat him like he’s damaged. Like he’s fragile. Steve just holds him. Just kisses him, and lets him cry.

“You’re okay, honey,” is all he murmurs, again and again. “You’re okay, I love you so much.”

Eventually, Bucky gets it together, and turns around in Steve’s arms to kiss his sweet mouth. He holds Steve’s chin lightly with his fingertips, and opens his mouth to Steve’s tongue.

When they pull apart, Bucky looks into the blue sky of Steve’s eyes, and feels like he’s standing on solid ground again.

Steve, miraculously, feels like home.

“You ready?” Steve asks, and Bucky nods. He is. With Steve, he’s never been more ready.

Silently, they gather up their bags, turn off their personal phones and leave them on Bucky’s kitchen counter, and then walk to the door. Steve reaches out, and takes Bucky’s hand.

And they go.

RJ’s apartment is unbelievably shitty — run down, and sketchy as hell — but at least it still has a buzzer.

“Fuck off,” RJ’s voice comes through a few seconds after Bucky buzzes up.

“It’s me,” he says quickly before RJ can take his finger off the button on his side.

There’s a pause. “Bucky?”

“Yeah. Can you come down?”

Another pause. “Why don’t you come up?”

“I can’t.” Bucky knows that a few of RJ’s neighbors have doorbell cameras, and while he’s pretty sure Hydra hasn’t taken the risk of following _him_ , Bucky has no delusions that they wouldn’t try to get to him through RJ. But there aren’t any security cameras outside the building, so outside _should_ be safe. “It’s important, kid.”

“Okay,” RJ finally says. “Give me a sec.”

Bucky shifts his weight as he waits. Steve is waiting just down the street, in the parked car Tony sent, watching from a distance to make sure everything is okay.

After a minute or two, RJ appears at the security door, and walks out to meet Bucky. He’s in his pajamas, with a cautious frown on his face, and he crosses his arms when the front door shuts behind him.

“Hi?” he says suspiciously.

“Hey, kid,” Bucky replies. His hands itch to reach out and pull RJ into a hug, to try to comfort and be comforted, but RJ is still scowling at him, so he aims for directness instead. “I’m—I’m gonna be out of town for a bit, okay?”

RJ blinks, taken aback. “When?” he asks.

“Right now,” Bucky answers, and RJ’s eyebrows shoot up into his hair. “I’m on my way out of the city. I wanted to drop by and—”

“What?!” RJ gasps. “Bucky! You’re just—? You can’t just—! What if I need you?” He’s just about panicking, and Bucky’s heart _aches_.

“Hey,” he begins in a soothing voice, “it’s okay, buddy—”

“No, it’s not!” RJ snaps, and his voice is starting to get louder now. “You’re just going? With no warning at all? Why didn’t you tell me—?”

“Hey, hey, quiet, okay? Come here.” Bucky takes RJ by the arm, and pulls him off, out of the building’s front entrance, hoping not to draw too much attention. “RJ, I need you to listen,” he says, serious and low, eyes boring into the kid’s, trying to convey how important this really is. “I didn’t tell you because I didn’t know. I have to go because—” He stops, and wets his lips nervously. “Do you know why I took you in when I met you?”

RJ just breathes and frowns. “No,” he says eventually. “You never told me.”

“Yeah,” Bucky agrees. “I haven’t really told anyone. I’m trying to get better about that.”

RJ’s eyebrows press even further together, a million questions written across his face.

Bucky sighs. He doesn’t have time to tell his whole story. He hopes this will do for now. “When I was around your age,” he tells RJ, “I was in a similar situation to the one you were in before we met. I can’t really get into details right now, I’m sorry, but I promise I’ll tell you when it’s safe, okay?”

RJ’s frown softens from confusion to concern. He wets his own lips. “Are you not safe?” he asks at length.

Bucky winces. “No,” he confesses. “Not right now.”

“That’s why you’re leaving town.” RJ’s voice is even, but his expression is panicked again.

“Yes.”

RJ nods. Then, in a small voice, like a little kid, he says, “Okay.”

“I’ll keep in touch when and how I can, okay?” Bucky tells him, wishing with everything in him that he could ease that worry from RJ’s face. “I can’t promise it’ll be every day, but whenever I can, I will.”

RJ nods again, and he’s clearly trying not to cry.

“Buddy,” Bucky says. “Look at me.” And RJ does. “It’s gonna be okay.”

It’s incredibly clear that RJ doesn’t believe him as he frowns again. “You can’t know that,” he says quietly.

And he’s right. Fuck, he’s right.

“I’m leaving so I can be safe,” Bucky amends. “I’ll come back as soon as I can.”

“What if you never can?” RJ asks, scared.

“I don’t know,” Bucky breathes like a confession. “Wherever I am in this world, though, RJ, you will _always_ have a home with me. Got that?”

It takes a minute, but finally, RJ nods.

Bucky nods back, and clears his throat. “You don’t have to worry about anything here, okay?” he says, trying to take care of everything he needs to before he leaves. “Move into my apartment while I’m gone, keep it safe for me. I’ve got someone here who’ll keep paying the bills for me, so you don’t need to do anything about that. Um, what else—?”

But he’s cut off when RJ suddenly grabs him in a tight hug. Bucky stops short, frozen at the open affection that RJ almost never willingly gives. He’s caught off guard, but quickly hugs RJ back just as fiercely.

Too soon, RJ pulls away, swiping at his eyes.

“I’ll call you as soon as I can,” Bucky promises again in a whisper, and RJ sniffs and nods, not meeting his eyes. “I love you, kid. You know that, right?”

“Yeah, I know,” RJ tells him, then glances up quickly before dropping his gaze again. “I love you, too.”

Bucky has to go. He hates it, but he has to go. Stopping here was a big enough risk as it is.

So he reaches out and clasps his hand against the side of RJ’s neck, unable to come up with the right words. No words could be enough here.

“I’ll see you, kid,” he says instead.

And then, aching with it all, he turns to go.

RJ has gone back inside by the time Bucky makes it back to the car. Steve reaches over to squeeze Bucky’s knee as he fastens his seatbelt over his lap.

“Come on,” Bucky tells Steve, and he tries to keep his voice light, but his throat is thick with tears. “Let’s go.”

Steve smiles at him, and starts the car. Then he pulls away from the curb, and Bucky watches out the window as they leave New York City behind.

🎈

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **Next time:**   
> 


	13. Thirteen: Late November

_The kid probably assumes Bucky wouldn’t feel his wallet sliding out of his pocket, halfway across the crosswalk. But the kid doesn’t know Bucky. It’s instinct that has him spinning around and seizing the thin wrist that’s connected to the hand quickly retreating from his pocket with his wallet._

_A pair of wide, scared eyes stare up at him behind dark, jagged bangs. The kid is small — short, and way too skinny — and their dark hair is cropped around their ears, crooked and clearly self-cut. A second after their eyes meet, the kid tries to jerk their wrist out of Bucky’s grip, but Bucky’s vibranium hand is too strong._

_“Let go!” the kid snaps furiously, tugging again._

_“Give me back my wallet,” Bucky calmly replies, holding out his other hand. The kid drops his wallet intentionally far from Bucky’s outstretched hand, but Bucky deftly catches it without releasing their wrist anyway. “Come on, we’re in the street,” he says, pulling the kid toward the sidewalk. “What’s your name?”_

_“Fuck you!”_

_“Pretty.”_

_There’s a kind of startled surprise in the kid’s eyes when Bucky glances back at them after that. They definitely didn’t expect Bucky to make a joke in the face of their vitriol._

_“You had anything to eat lately?” Bucky asks as soon as they’re both safe on the sidewalk, off to the side and out of the flow of the Times Square crowd._

_The kid glares at him again, brown eyes lit up by the bright city lights. Bucky almost wishes they looked as threatening as they obviously want to. Maybe his heart wouldn’t clench with worry over how this kid is gonna fare out here on the streets if that were the case._

_Unlikely._

_The kid huffs, and answers, “That’s what your wallet was supposed to be for.”_

_Bucky nods. “Okay,” he says simply, releasing the kid’s wrist, and heading back in the direction they came from. “Come on, there’s a good halal cart about two and a half blocks down.”_

_The kid stays still for a few seconds, just staring after him. Bucky doesn’t look back, but he’s aware when the kid suddenly jogs to catch up with him._

_“What are you doing?” they demand when they fall in step with Bucky’s long strides. He slows down marginally so the kid doesn’t have to keep skipping to keep up with his pace, and shrugs._

_“My wallet was supposed to be so you can eat?” Bucky asks, and the kid glowers at him, but nods. “Then let’s go get you some food.”_

_“I just tried to rob you,” the kid points out, like Bucky is missing an important point here, “and you want to buy me food?”_

_“Yup.”_

_And that’s that. The two of them walk side by side in silence until they get to the halal cart, and Bucky orders them both a couple of gyros and rice plates. While they wait, the kid looks up at him._

_“I’m a guy,” he says defiantly, and Bucky nods._

_“Good to know,” he replies. The kid narrows his eyes like he’s expecting Bucky to say something else. To mock him, maybe, or invalidate him. When Bucky just smiles, his eyebrows furrow further._

_After they get their food, Bucky leads the kid across the street to an empty bench. They’re both about halfway through their gyros before either of them speak again._

_“RJ,” the kid says out of nowhere. Bucky looks up at him, eyebrows raised. “My name,” the kid clarifies. “It’s RJ.”_

_Bucky smiles. “Nice to meet you, RJ,” he says genuinely. “I’m Bucky.”_

_RJ nods, and Bucky catches the faint hint of a smile on his face before he ducks his head._

_Something in Bucky twinges with uncomfortable familiarity. And before he can stop to think it through, he hears himself ask, “You got a place to stay, RJ?”_

“Honey, wake up.”

Bucky’s eyes blink open at the sound of Steve’s gentle voice, and a warm thumb brushing over his cheekbone. The car is parked in front of a Quality Inn, and Steve is smiling softly at him from the driver’s seat.

“Where are we?” Bucky grunts. He fell asleep not long after they stopped for food sometime around midday. They’d been taking turns driving for almost ten hours by that point, traveling for a few hours in one direction, and then turning around and looping back for a bit, before heading somewhere new. Just trying to lose the trail of anyone who could possibly be following them. The sun is getting lower in the sky now, but the car is off, so Bucky can’t check the clock on the dashboard.

“We’re on the border of West Virginia and Ohio,” Steve answers, brushing away a stray lock of hair stuck to Bucky’s forehead. “It’s a little after five. I thought we could stop and rest for the night?”

Bucky sniffs, and sits up groggily. “Yeah,” he agrees, “sounds good, babe.” He was dreaming about RJ, about the day they met. One of those dreams he gets that’s really just his mind handing him a memory, forcing him to watch it through. He used to get a lot of these, back when his brain was still trying hard to recover from the damage that had been done to it under Hydra. They’re rarer these days, but they still leave him feeling disoriented and unsettled when he wakes up.

He misses RJ already. He _hated_ leaving him like that, watching the fear and anxiety play out on his face when Bucky told him he needed to go.

A soft kiss, pressed to his temple, draws Bucky out of his thoughts.

Steve is watching him closely when Bucky looks over at him. “You okay, gorgeous?” he asks.

Bucky tries for a smile. “Just a weird dream,” he lies. It’s not _entirely_ the truth, but it’s hard to explain the way he feels right now.

Steve juts out his lower lip sympathetically, and strokes Bucky’s hair again. “You wanna talk about it?”

And weirdly…Bucky actually does. He never wants to talk about his dreams. His old therapist used to have to pry it out of him like pulling teeth. But Steve asks, and Bucky wants to tell him.

“Sometimes I dream in memories,” he hears himself begin to explain before he can overthink it. “It started when Nat and I were getting ready to leave Hydra, and we’d figured out how to secretly get off of most of the drugs, and counteract some of the brainwashing, so my brain was healing from all this damage, and part of the way it did that was by remembering things I’d forgotten through dreams. It still happens sometimes, even though I don’t really need them anymore.”

“You had a memory dream?” Steve asks.

Bucky nods, and Steve’s fingers in his hair come along for the ride. “I dreamed about the night I met RJ,” he says. Then tells Steve the whole story.

When he’s finished, Steve rubs a thumb over Bucky’s forehead.

“That sounds like a nice memory,” he says.

“It is,” Bucky agrees. “I just always wake up from these memory dreams feeling weird.”

“And you miss him,” Steve supplies.

Bucky sighs. “Yeah,” he agrees. “And I miss him.”

Steve kisses his temple again. Bucky turns so Steve will kiss the bridge of his nose, too.

“I’m gonna go check us in, okay?” Steve murmurs against Bucky’s forehead before he kisses that, too. “Do you want to come with me, or would you rather wait here?”

“I’ll come with you,” Bucky says. He realizes that his fingers are curled in the front of Steve’s shirt, and he’s just sort of holding on like a baby.

Steve doesn’t seem to mind at all.

Later, after Steve has ordered a pizza to their room, he looks over at where Bucky is, admittedly, moping on the still-made hotel bed, and smiles kindly.

“Why don’t you call him?” he asks, which confuses Bucky enough to make a quizzical face up at him, and that makes Steve laugh. “The phones Tony gave us are like, super encrypted,” he says. “You can call him, it’ll be okay.”

Bucky still doesn’t say anything, but he does give Steve a patented disbelieving glare. Steve is clearly talking about RJ, which means Bucky has been doing a piss-poor job of pretending he’s not still sulking about his dream.

But Steve walks over, and sits down on the bed next to Bucky, reaching out to pat his knee. “Call him,” he insists. “You’ll feel better.”

Bucky sighs, and picks up his phone. Steve smiles at him, then stands, walking over to the bathroom and closing the door behind him in an obvious and sweet attempt at giving Bucky some privacy.

Bucky dials RJ’s cell phone number, a number he knows by heart, and he doesn’t realize at first that he’s holding his breath while it rings.

“Hello?”

Bucky’s breath comes out in a whoosh. “Hey, kid,” he says with relief.

“Bu—!” RJ starts to exclaim, but then cuts himself off. “Wait, hang on,” he says. And then there’s some rustling over the phone, and the sound of a door closing, and RJ is back. “Bucky, hi! Are you okay?”

“I’m good, buddy,” Bucky tells him fondly. “How are you? What are you doing?”

“I’m at the center,” RJ answers. “And I’m okay, I just…I’m worried about you.”

“You don’t have to worry about me, kid,” Bucky tries to reassure him, “I’m being really safe, and I have someone here who’s helping to protect me.”

“Who?”

A small smile tugs at Bucky’s mouth. “You remember that guy I was seeing a while ago?” he asks.

“You’re back together with him?” RJ asks. For some reason, he sounds really excited.

“Yeah,” Bucky confirms. “He came with me.”

“Oh, thank _god_ ,” RJ sighs.

“‘Thank god’?!” Bucky laughs incredulously.

“You were fucking miserable without him,” RJ tells him bluntly. “I’m glad you’re back with him. And you think he’s trustworthy?”

“Very much so. Believe me, I triple checked.”

“Good.”

“His name’s Steve,” Bucky says, smiling softly again. Just _thinking_ about Steve is making him feel dopey and gooey.

“That’s not a _terrible_ name,” RJ says magnanimously, which makes Bucky laugh again. “Are you happy?”

“I miss you,” Bucky admits.

“But other than that?”

Bucky’s smile widens into a grin. “I’m happy,” he says. “I’m _really_ happy. It’s weird.”

“Being happy is weird?” RJ challenges.

“Under the circumstances, yeah.”

RJ scoffs at him. “You love him, and you got him back, you’re allowed to be happy.”

“How do you know I love him?” Bucky asks. He never told RJ as much. Only told Nat before he had to break things off with Steve, and then never said it out loud again, until he told Steve two days ago.

But: “Please,” RJ says dismissively, “it’s been _so_ obvious.”

And that startles yet another laugh out of Bucky.

“You sound happy,” RJ says quietly in response to Bucky’s laughter.

“I am,” Bucky tells him softly.

There’s a short silence between them, both just listening to the other breathe. Then, RJ says, “Thanks for calling me.”

Bucky’s heart twinges. “I wish you could come over and sit on my couch while I order obscene amounts of Indian food,” he confesses.

“We’ll do that when you get back,” RJ promises.

“It’s a plan.”

Another short pause, and then RJ reluctantly says, “I have to go. I’m hiding in the supply closet, but Sharon will kill me if I don’t finish up all this paperwork before I leave.”

“Oof,” Bucky agrees, “yeah, you don’t want to cross that woman. Go. I’ll call you again later.”

“This number was hidden when you called,” RJ says. It’s a statement, but it sounds like he wants to ask for something.

Bucky winces because he knows what RJ wants. “Yeah,” he says.

“You can’t give it to me, can you?”

There it is. “I’m sorry.”

“No,” RJ says firmly right away, “you need to be safe.”

Bucky sighs. RJ might understand this better than most, but it still hurts. “I miss you, kid.”

RJ only pauses for a second before he says, “I miss you, too.” Then he sighs, too, an echo of Bucky’s, and adds, “I gotta go.”

“I’ll call you as soon as I can,” Bucky swears.

“Okay. Bye, Bucky.”

“Bye, RJ.”

🎈

An hour after Steve takes over driving the next day, something occurs to Bucky.

“Hey, Steve?” he says. “Can I ask you something?”

Steve stops quietly humming along to the song on the radio, and glances attentively over at Bucky. “Yeah, what’s up?”

“How did you get ahold of CCTV images of me and Rumlow in that alley?” Bucky asks. But Steve just smirks. “Come _on_ ,” Bucky laughs, “I know investigation is part of your job description—”

“Part of my job _title_ , in fact,” Steve points out.

“But that doesn’t explain,” Bucky presses on, still laughing as he raises his voice over the interruption, “how you talked some security officer into just handing over private, closed-circuit footage to you!”

Steve chuckles, and relents. “The paper’s side entrance is in that alley,” he explains. “We only have the head of security, this woman Fury’s known for forever. He hired her, like me, because she needed a landing place, and she runs the operation on her own. She’s _incredible_ , though, and she happens to be a close personal friend of mine, ever since we got to talking one of my first weeks there, and found out we have a ton in common. She’s ex-Air Force, but I don’t hold that against her.” Bucky giggles at that, while Steve tilts his head back and forth, weighing what he’s about to say. “Sometimes she...helps me out,” he lands on eventually.

Bucky narrows his eyes at Steve, who keeps his own eyes trained carefully on the road in front of them.

“She’s working with you on your investigation into Hydra, isn’t she?” Bucky susses.

A slow, mischievous smile spreads across Steve’s face before he says, “I don’t reveal my sources, sorry.”

And Bucky just cracks up again.

It’s another few hours later before Steve, who’s been slumped in the passenger seat, singing along to the radio again, returns the question.

“Bucky,” he says out of the blue, “can I ask you something?”

“‘Course you can,” Bucky tells him sincerely, signaling to get over so he can pass the slow-ass Honda in front of them.

Steve hesitates for a second, so Bucky waits him out. Then, he asks, “What about Wakanda?”

Bucky blinks, and feels a clench of panic inside his chest cavity at just the suggestion. He tries to keep his voice light when he replies, “What _about_ Wakanda?”

“Do you think we could go there?” Steve asks. “I mean it’s gotta be safer there than—”

“No,” Bucky cuts him off without meaning to. “Sorry, I— No, we can’t go to Wakanda.”

Steve is silent for a while after that, and Bucky can feel blue-green eyes trained carefully on him, but he doesn’t turn to meet them.

Then: “Can I ask why?” Steve presses gently.

Bucky sighs. “I don’t—” he begins, then stops. “I can’t. I don’t feel—” Safe. He doesn’t feel safe there, and he hasn’t since he was snatched out of his own bed. Every time he’s been back since he escaped from Hydra, he’s spent his time there on edge and afraid. It doesn’t matter that he _knows_ things are much safer and better than they were when he was kidnapped, he still can’t feel at peace there. “I just can’t,” he ends up concluding.

Out of the corner of his eye, he sees Steve nod, then turn back to look out the window.

A moment later, to Bucky’s great relief, Steve begins to sing again.

🎈

They find a local inn that night, somewhere in Maine this time.

They’ve been stretched out on the bed, lazily necking, for the last hour or so. It started with them cuddling together and watching TV, but then Bucky’d tipped his head back to start pressing little kisses under Steve’s jaw, and it quickly turned into slow, languid making out with no real urgency to go any further yet. Just hands under shirts, and no moves to take anything off just yet.

They’ve got time.

That is, until Steve murmurs against Bucky’s lips, “You been tested recently?”

Bucky pulls back as much as he can, lying, as he is, under his huge boyfriend, to look Steve in the eyes. “You wanna stop using condoms?” he asks in reply.

Granted, they’ve only actually used condoms with each other twice so far, both of them too fucking exhausted last night from being awake for nearly two days straight to do anything but lie in each other’s arms and snore loudly. But they’ve both been very clear that they are very committed to this relationship, and to each other, it’s not an entirely unreasonable conversation to have at this point.

And sure enough, Steve nods in answer, running the fingers of the hand he has pushed up inside Bucky’s shirt lightly across Bucky’s clavicle. “I’d like to,” he says. “If you’re ready.”

Bucky’s smile grows from hazy and kiss-softened, into a full, pleased grin. “I’d love that,” he breathes into the space between them, and Steve grins, too. “Do we need to find a clinic?”

Steve shrugs. “Not for me,” he admits. “I got tested back when we were still dating the first time.”

“You did?!” Bucky asks, shocked. “You didn’t tell me!”

“Yeah, because you wanted to take things slow!” Steve counters, grinning, his hand sliding down to pinch lightly at Bucky’s side. “I wasn’t about to _pressure_ you by telling you I’d gone in to get tested two weeks after we started seeing each other.”

“ _Two weeks?!_ ” Bucky demands, rather delighted. “Fuck, doll, you were _sooo_ into me.”

“Still am, and I’m not ashamed of that in the _least_ ,” Steve insists. “Have you _seen_ you? Have you _met_ you?”

“Fuck off,” Bucky laughs fondly. He’s pink with it, with how demonstrably Steve loves him. “So, you went and got tested in _August_ ,” he prompts, to get back on topic.

“Yes,” Steve says, “I got tested in August, because I knew I was gonna want to fuck you bare as soon as possible. All of my results were good. I was gonna bring it up after we started having sex, when it seemed like you might be ready to have that conversation, but I figured it wasn’t bad to be prepared a little early. I have the copy of my results in my messenger bag, if you want to look at it.”

Bucky can’t help but dissolve into giggles over Steve _bringing his test results with him_ to confront his ex about the Russian organized crime syndicate he was involved with in his youth.

“I’m okay, I trust you,” he chuckles when he’s marginally pulled himself together.

But then he looks carefully over Steve’s face — all soft curves, and soft beard, and wide, blue eyes — and quietly asks, “Does that mean you didn’t sleep with anyone while we were apart?”

“Nope,” Steve says simply, smiling at him as Bucky brushes the pads of his fingers over Steve’s left cheekbone.

“You could have, you know,” Bucky sighs. “I mean, I know it doesn’t make any difference for me to say that now, but I wouldn’t be upset with you if you had. I broke your hea—”

“You _have_ to stop blaming yourself for that,” Steve cuts him off, firm and gentle at once. “You made a survival decision, and you made it out of love for me. I will never, _ever_ fault you for that, okay?”

Bucky feels his lip tremble just a little. He nods. “Okay,” he whispers, and Steve presses in and kisses him.

After he settles back in with his head resting on Bucky’s shoulder, Steve starts stroking his clavicle again and adds, “And I wasn’t about to sleep with someone else while we were apart, Buck. I don’t want you feeling guilty about it, but I love you more than anything, and I missed you too much to even want to _try_ to get over you yet. Maybe if we hadn’t gotten back together, I woulda tried in a year or something, but not yet. Not after just a few weeks, my love.”

Bucky’s hand finds Steve’s under his shirt, and he laces their fingers together and squeezes. He understands completely. He’d pretty much resigned himself to never dating anyone ever again. To going back to the occasional hookup, until Hydra inevitably took him back, and just missing Steve for the rest of his life.

“Anyway,” Steve says, kissing Bucky’s collarbone through his t-shirt, because it’s the closest part of him he can reach, “you have yet to answer my original question.”

“I actually did get tested not too long ago,” Bucky confesses. Steve raises a curious eyebrow at him. “I had a one-night stand about two months before I met you, and the condom came off right before he came,” Bucky explains. “He kept insisting he was good, but he was kinda shady, and obviously I wasn’t gonna just take his word for it, so I went to the clinic the next day. Everything came back fine, luckily, and I haven’t slept with anyone but you since then.”

Steve’s face lights up. “So we can…?” he asks.

Bucky giggles at the pure joy and excitement on his face. “Yeah,” he confirms, “we can.”

Steve’s delighted grin is the sweetest thing on earth. He pushes forward again to press a kiss to Bucky’s mouth, slow and intentional.

“We could start tonight, if we want,” Steve soughs, low and sweet, his lips brushing across Bucky’s as he speaks. And Bucky can’t help his shiver of anticipation of feeling just Steve inside him, and nothing else.

But — because apparently, God has cursed them for their sexual hubris — Steve’s phone chooses this moment to start blaring the opening notes of AC/DC’s “Back in Black.” Which is the ringtone Tony Stark set for himself in both of their phones, that neither Steve nor Bucky can figure out how to change.

Steve huffs a sigh, letting his forehead fall to Bucky’s shoulder for a moment, before murmuring, “Hold that thought,” and hauling himself up off the bed to go retrieve his phone from the desk next to the television.

Bucky watches as Steve answers the phone, and then leans heavily forward against his free hand on the desk as he talks to Tony Stark. It suddenly strikes Bucky how _tired_ Steve looks.

It’s no wonder, really. He just up and left his home and his life to go on a relentless road trip with Bucky, he’s been insisting on doing the lion’s share of the driving so far, and Bucky knows that he didn’t sleep well last night — that every time Bucky woke up slightly to roll over, Steve was already awake.

Steve shifts his weight, reaches up to rub his hand over his face — and Bucky’s priorities shift. Steve takes such wonderful care of him all the time. Tonight, he wants to take care of Steve.

Bucky rolls out of the bed, snatching the bottle of lube up from Steve’s nightstand on his way, and walks up behind his loving, sacrificial boyfriend. He puts the lube down on the desk, and wraps both arms around Steve’s waist, plastering himself against his back, as he starts pressing hot, open-mouth kisses along the column of his throat. The corner of Steve’s mouth pulls into a crooked smile, and the line between his eyebrows melts away as he tilts his head to give Bucky more room to suck a bruise under his ear.

“Yeah,” Steve says into the phone, reaching over to touch the bottle of lube as he leans heavily back into Bucky’s hold. “Yeah, Tone, sounds good.” Bucky scrapes his teeth over the mark he’s making in Steve’s skin, and Steve tries hard to suppress a gasp. “No, Tony, he’s not,” he clips into the phone. And then: “Okay, fine, he is. I’m gonna hang up now, okay? It’s not gross, Tony, it’s love.”

Chuckling against Steve’s neck, Bucky can vaguely hear Tony making retching sounds over the phone, right before Steve hangs up on him. He lets his head fall back onto Bucky's shoulder as his phone clatters on the desk.

“Mm,” Steve hums happily. “Thanks for cutting that short, Tony has a tendency to ramble.”

“You really wanna talk about Tony right now?” Bucky stops tonguing at the shell of Steve’s ear to ask, and Steve huffs.

“No, no, you’re right,” he agrees, “shutting up now.”

“Not what I meant,” Bucky murmurs, nipping at Steve’s jaw as he skims his hands under Steve’s shirt and across his abs.

“You brought lube over here.”

“Mhm,” Bucky hums, kissing down Steve’s neck again, and letting his hands wander up to squeeze at his pecs, scritching his fingers over the soft hair on Steve’s broad chest.

“You want me to fuck you on the desk?” Steve guesses, his voice already getting rough.

Bucky shakes his head against Steve’s neck.

“No?”

“Well, _yes_ , but I was kinda thinking first I’d fuck _you_ ,” he whispers against Steve’s ear, grinning when Steve shivers. “Right here, just like this. If you want?”

“I want,” Steve answers right away, nodding vehemently. “I want, I definitely want.”

“Good,” Bucky breathes, then pinches both of Steve’s nipples, rubbing them between his fingers as Steve whines and arches back against his chest. Bucky bites at the corded muscle of Steve’s neck again, then pulls back just enough to slip Steve’s shirt off over his head and drop it on the floor before moving to quickly open Steve’s fly.

Bucky gently shifts Steve forward until he’s braced against the desk again, then hastily sheds his own shirt as he drops to his knees, and hooks his fingers under the waistband of Steve’s jeans and underwear to strip them both off of Steve’s hips, until they’re pooled on the floor. Steve kicks them away, and spreads his feet apart a little more, and then lets out a stuttered groan when Bucky bites down on one of his ample asscheeks.

“Mm,” Bucky hums, spreading Steve’s cheeks to get a good look at his pretty hole. He runs his sensitive metal thumb over the soft, puckered skin, and asks, “You ready, or do you need to wash up?”

He can’t see much of Steve’s face, but he does watch his broad, freckled shoulders turn a pretty shade of pink as Steve clears his throat. “Um,” he says, “I’m, uh— I’m ready, actually.”

Bucky grabs Steve’s hips, and turns him just enough that Steve looks down at his face, wide open with surprised delight. “You gotta start learning how to ask me for what you want,” he tells Steve earnestly. “I’m more than happy to do this kinda thing for you, doll.”

Steve’s smile is sweet and tender. He reaches back to card his hand gently through Bucky’s hair as he says, “Okay, gorgeous. I’ll do better.”

Bucky nips at his hipbone, then turns Steve back so he can return to what he was doing before.

When Bucky leans in and laves his tongue over Steve’s pretty, puckered hole, Steve lets out the sweetest little moan, and leans more heavily on his hands. Bucky smiles and laps at his entrance with little kitten licks, then he starts pressing his tongue harder, massaging the ring of muscle so he can, after a minute, slip his tongue inside.

“ _Fuck_ ,” Steve sighs. “Fuck, honey, your mouth feels incredible.” He lets out something like a whine as Bucky pushes his tongue further inside him, curling it to chase the taste. “Jesus Christ, I can’t believe how lucky I am to have you, baby, I really can’t. Love you so fucking much.”

Bucky hums his agreement, the closest he can come to telling Steve he loves him, too, with his tongue in his ass.

He spends some time there, just loving on Steve with his mouth, savoring the taste and feel of him, stretching him slowly open as Steve alternates between babbling praise, and devolving into moans and sighs and gasps. After a few minutes of this, Bucky brings his thumb over to join his tongue, pulling at Steve’s rim and slipping inside, to enthusiastic groans from above.

“Fuck, baby, _faster_ ,” Steve moans. “Come on, need you, need your cock, honey, _please!_ ”

Bucky laughs, and pulls back to bite Steve asscheek again, eliciting a sharp hiss from Steve’s mouth. “Jesus,” he says with fond exasperation, “you’re even a bossy bottom.”

“Yeah,” Steve huffs, “shocking that that part of my personality doesn’t change with my sexual role, isn’t it?”

“Fuck you,” Bucky laughs, wrapping his left arm around Steve to rub fondly at the soft, dark hairs on his stomach.

“Thought that’s what you were s’posed to be doing,” Steve shoots back.

“Thought you _liked_ my mouth,” Bucky counters.

“I very much do, baby,” Steve sighs, all the edge gone from his voice as he lets his head fall forward between his arms, “but _Christ_ , I want your cock, can we speed this up a little?”

“Nuh-uh, pal,” Bucky tells him, grinning smugly. “I may not top very often, but _I’m_ the top now. We go at _my_ pace.”

And then he leans forward, and sticks his tongue back in Steve’s hole.

Steve groans, long and loud, while Bucky uses his tongue to prod at Steve’s inner walls and stretch him open more.

Finally, though, he does take pity on Steve. And after keeping him on edge with just his mouth for long enough, Bucky pulls away and stands, shedding the rest of his clothes as he does, and kicking them away to pile with Steve’s as he reaches for the lube. Steve lets out a breath of relief and turns over his shoulder so Bucky will kiss him sweetly.

“Stevie,” Bucky breathes when they part just to press their foreheads together, “I love you so fucking much.”

Steve hums happily, and tilts up to kiss Bucky’s lips again. “I love you, too,” he whispers. Then gasps again when Bucky leans into him, pressing his very hard cock against Steve’s ass.

“Gonna fuck you so good,” Bucky murmurs as he uncaps the lube and starts slicking up his fingers. “You’re so good to me, gonna be good for you tonight.”

Steve bites back another loud groan as Bucky slides two fingers in him easy. He finger-fucks Steve in and out a few times, feeling around until he finds the spot that makes him go, “ _huhanggah!_

Bucky laughs, nipping at Steve’s shoulder. “Fuck, I love you,” he murmurs, then rubs at Steve’s prostate again, grinning against his skin when he lets out a roar.

It only takes another few seconds of this before Steve is babbling again, “Come on, honey, come _on_ , I need it, need you— _fuck!_ ” So Bucky adds another finger.

His own cock is _achingly_ hard, and has been since he started eating Steve out, and he’s been half-hard since they started necking a few hours ago, so as much as he’d love to tease Steve and keep him on edge a while longer, the next time Steve begs for his cock, Bucky growls and bites down on the meat of his shoulder, frantically slicking up before he lines up with Steve’s hole.

The sounds falling from Steve’s lips, as Bucky slowly pushes into the tight heat of him, are the prettiest things Bucky’s ever fucking heard. He mouths and kisses at Steve’s neck as he goes, slow and steady to give Steve time to stretch around him. Bucky really doesn’t top very much, mostly preferring to be on the receiving end when he’s with another man — and often when he’s with people of other genders, too — but Steve feels so _fucking_ good, and there’s no barrier between them, and all he wants to do is ram into him hard and fast and relentless, but he’s gotta be patient so he doesn’t hurt Steve.

But while Bucky holds there, buried to the hilt inside the man he just adores with everything in him, Steve squirms, jostling him and pushing him back just enough that he slides out an inch or so, and then Steve reaches back and yanks him by the hip, until he slams back into that pretty hole.

“ _Fuck!_ ” Bucky gasps, all of his careful composition gone in a flash. “ _Steve_ ,” he whines, “ _I’m_ the top!”

“I can bottom and still be in charge,” Steve counters, giggling, though his voice still sounds wrecked. “You never heard of a power bottom? Fuck me!”

“Jesus Christ,” Bucky huffs. But he doesn’t stop himself from pulling out so far that only Steve’s fluttering rim around his head is keeping him inside, and then thrusting back in _hard_.

“Fuck, _yes_ ,” Steve sighs, a grin in his voice. Bucky reaches around and squeezes Steve’s huge, beautiful tits again, pressing his chest hard against Steve’s back.

He picks up speed, thrusting into Steve again, and again, and again as he pants raggedly in his ear. Steve keeps making sweet, high whining sounds, and Bucky adjusts slightly, grinning when the shift causes him to nail Steve’s prostate, getting Steve to make a noise almost like a sob.

“Not gonna—” Steve starts, then cuts himself off with another sobbing noise. “Not gonna last, baby, gonna— _ah!_ ”

“You gonna come, sweetheart?” Bucky asks him, and Steve nods. “Haven’t even touched you, you gonna come from just my cock?” Steve’s body stutters, and he practically screams his groan. “Go ahead, baby,” Bucky purrs in his ear, “come for me, won’t you?”

And Steve does, clenching hard around Bucky’s cock as his own spurts out ropes of cum, hitting him in the chest, and splashing across the desk in front of them. And the sight of Steve coming, head thrown back, and eyes squeezed shut, and full, pink lips dropped open in ecstasy as he defiles himself and this room they’re staying in — it _really_ does it for Bucky. So as Steve clenches through his own orgasm, Bucky shoves into him once, twice more, and then he’s coming, too, clinging to Steve and shaking through it.

By the time Bucky comes back to earth from fully whiting out for a second there, he’s got both arms squeezed tight around Steve’s waist, holding himself up as he’s slumped against Steve’s back, which rises and falls with Steve’s panting breaths. Steve is leaned back against Bucky as heavily as Bucky is leaned forward against him, and they’re both dripping sweat.

Bucky shifts just slightly, pulling out, and shivering when his own cum practically floods out with him.

“Christ,” Steve gasps. “ _Fucking_ Christ, honey, that was so goddamn good.”

“Yeah?” Bucky asks, mouthing at Steve’s earlobe. He’s speechless to say anything else. He loves Steve like burning.

Steve doesn’t really answer, at least not out loud. Instead, he spins around in Bucky’s arms, seizing him by the back of the neck and between his shoulder blades, and yanking him in for a searing, hungry kiss. Bucky absolutely melts in his arms.

“Let’s take a shower,” Steve murmurs against Bucky’s mouth before he bites down on his lower lip.

Bucky nods. “Okay,” he says, but then thinks better of it. “First, though, lemme wipe your spunk off this desk before it gets crusty.”

Steve throws his head back with how hard he belly laughs.

🎈

That night, Bucky dreams in memories again. They’re scattered, this time, and fragmented; one blending confusingly into another.

_He’s in a hospital bed in New York City. His window looks out onto the back wall of another high rise, an alley of trash bins down below. He’s not looking out the window, though. He’s looking at a laptop one of the nurses brought him, where the rest of his squad is grinning at him through a video call, all clamoring to talk over each other. He’s in a lot of pain — he can’t move or sit still but to hurt — and he’s alone. But for the first time in what feels like a long time, he’s smiling._

_“We miss you!” Morita shouts, and everyone else takes up the cry. Bucky laughs wetly._

_“I miss you losers, too,” he tells them honestly._

_“You hear that?” Jones protests. “The Sarge called us losers!”_

_“‘E is not wrong,” Dernier shrugs, lighting up a cigarette and then handing it to Monty, then lighting up another as Monty sticks the first in his mouth. “You lot_ are _losers.”_

_“Bollocks,” Monty mumbles, but he’s grinning. “It’s not the same here without you, Sarge,” he tells Bucky._

_“What,” Bucky asks, “you mean to tell me war isn’t as fun anymore since your idiot CO got himself blown up?”_

_“Weirdly, it’s not,” Morita says solemnly._

_“How’re you doing, Sarge?” Dum Dum asks, actually serious. He and Jones are the only ones Bucky’s already talked to. Just barely awake for the last two days since his most recent surgery, and the subsequent lifting of his medically-induced coma, Bucky spoke to the two of them on the phone for about five minutes total the day he woke up. He knows Dum Dum rode with him and the captain from the other squad to the airlift that took Bucky out of there. He’s inferred, from the tight way he tried to joke about it, that Dum Dum was beside himself during the ride. That he was pretty convinced, as they sped toward the airlift, that Bucky was dying, or maybe even that he was already dead._

_Bucky can see himself in the tiny little window on his screen. His face is still banged up in purples, yellows, and greens as his bruises start to heal. His left shoulder is bandaged to shit and back, but it’s still glaringly obvious that his arm is completely gone. He looks like hell. He_ feels _like hell._

_“I’m doing great, pal,” Bucky answers, grinning through the pain._

_It’s a blatant and egregious lie, and they all know it. But he’s not about to let that show._

The dream shifts.

_He’s still in the same hospital bed. He’s barely moved at all in a week, aside from when they wheeled him back into yet another surgery a day or two ago. Time has become hard to track, just a haze of pain medication, physical exams, and daytime television. The only marking of the passage of time has been the changing shifts of his nurses._

_One of his favorite nurses — the blond, deeply handsome one, with the thin, graceful wrists, the delicate, angular jaw, and the dimples — comes in to tell him he has visitors, and Bucky frowns at him, a mix of pain and confusion. Who the hell would be visiting_ him? _Everyone Bucky knows doesn’t currently reside in this country._

_But then he hears a pair of soft gasps, and when he looks over, he thinks for a moment that he’s hallucinating._

_“Ma?”_

_Winnifred Zimaev rushes to his bedside, and cradles his face in her hands, tears streaming down her face._

_“Baby,” she weeps, leaning down and pressing her forehead to his, and Bucky suddenly realizes he’s weeping, too. She kisses his cheeks one at a time, and then his forehead, then wraps her arms gently around him, and holds the back of his head, his tearful face buried in her chest, as she whispers, “Oh, my boy, my sweet baby boy, my Bucky.”_

_She’s older than he remembers, but she looks like the pictures he’s seen of her over the last three years. Overwhelming guilt washes over him as she just kisses his face, and whispers the name she gave him, over and over again. She hasn’t seen him in ten years, because after he got out, he couldn’t bring himself to go home. She’s his_ mom _, and she’s_ here _, and he’s_ broken _. Just a shell of the boy she raised._

_She deserves so much more than the man he became._

_Another voice, also thick with tears, pipes up from behind Bucky’s mom. “Ma, you’re hogging him!”_

_Winnie shifts just slightly, not letting go of Bucky completely, but enough for Bucky to finally get a look at the other woman who came in with his mom, and—_

_“Bex?!”_

_It’s like his little sister’s face has been plastered on this grown woman’s head, but it’s her, it is. Becca nods, smiling through tears, and leans in to gingerly put her arms around him._

_“I can’t believe you’re here,” she murmurs as Bucky squeezes her with his remaining arm, and Bucky was thinking exactly the same thing about her._

_It’s a few hours later, after the three of them have sobbed into each other’s chests and shoulders with relief, and grief, and joy. Winnie is lying in Bucky’s bed with him, squished between the bed rail and Bucky’s right, less damaged side, his hand held between both of hers. Becca is on the chair, pulled up close to the bed, with her feet propped up next to Bucky’s and their mom’s. They haven’t asked him about the ten years they’ve missed, and he’s so grateful to them that they haven’t. He knows they must be dying to, but he can’t tell them. Not yet, anyway._

_“You want me to what?” he asks in response to his mom’s proposition._

_“Come home, sweetie,” Winnie says again. “Please. Come home, and let us take care of you while you heal.”_

_“Health care is better back home anyway,” Becca adds. “Shuri’s already building you a prosthetic.”_

_“_ Shuri _is?” Bucky asks incredulously. Shuri’s a_ baby _, last Bucky remembers. Actually, wait— “Shuri’s eleven!”_

_Becca shrugs. “You’d be surprised,” is all she says._

_“Please, Bucky,” Winnie says again. “Just come home.”_

_There are so many reasons why Bucky wants to say no. So many excuses that have kept him away for the last three years since he’s been free. But he’s hurting, and he’s lonely, and he’s scared. And his mom is here, asking him to come home._

_So he nods, tearing up all over again._

_“Okay.”_

The dream shifts again, and suddenly:

_He’s in Wakanda for the first time since he was fifteen. He’s still weak, and Becca is half-carrying him, tucked up against his side, under his arm, as he limps toward the palace. His stomach is in knots over the anticipation of seeing so many people for the first time in ten years — his dad, T’Challa, Shuri, Auntie Ramonda. And then his father’s face swims into view in front of him, and it’s with a shock he realizes he’s grown taller than the man who raised him._

_George is crying, and Bucky is crying, and as he falls forward into his dad’s arms, he feels like a little boy who did something wrong._

_“I’m sorry,” he hears himself babbling in a small voice, like he’s seven years old, his face buried in his dad’s shoulder, “I’m sorry, Daddy, I’m so_ sorry _—”_

_“Son,” George tells him, “sweet boy, please don’t be sorry. I’m so proud of you, I love you so much, I’m so sorry, son.”_

_Bucky can’t speak — just sobs ever harder._

Bucky wakes, with strong arms wrapped tightly around him, to Steve’s voice saying his name. It takes him a minute to realize that the wetness on his face and neck isn’t sweat, but tears.

🎈

Jarvis has them switch cars the next morning. Someone just shows up at the inn where they’re staying, and seamlessly swaps cars with them by casually placing their keys on the coffee table in the lobby, continuing to read the paper. And then, when Steve does the same, they fold their paper up, and stand, taking Steve’s keys and leaving their own. And that’s that.

Bucky and Steve end up in Delaware that night, driving through White Plains between Connecticut and New Jersey instead of taking the Deegan through the Bronx. It hurts, to be so close to home, and have to skirt around it like that, but they both understand that it’s necessary, and they don’t talk about the reasons.

The night after that finds them in Zionsville, Indiana, in another very quaint local inn. It takes Bucky by surprise how unsettled he feels, being back in the state he once lived in with Natasha. The last place he really lived while he still had both of the arms he was born with. There’s a strange mournfulness about it, even though they’re not very near the town he actually called home.

Steve notices. Of course he does. Bucky’s coming out of the bathroom after brushing his teeth, thinking about how even though he loves Steve immensely and unconditionally, and wants to be with him forever, going from spending most of his time alone to essentially living with another person on the road is still a crazy adjustment. And right now, there’s a part of Bucky that wants to be left alone to mope in the dark by himself. But then he walks out to see Steve stretched across the length of the bed, just flipping through channels on the TV, with one arm crooked behind his head, highlighting his bulging muscles, and Bucky instantly changes his mind.

He doesn’t want to be alone. He doesn’t want to wallow in his own bad feelings. He wants Steve.

He always wants Steve.

Bucky climbs into bed, and Steve doesn’t even think before he’s lifting his arm from behind his head to wrap it around Bucky’s shoulders instead. He finds a channel playing an old _Friends_ rerun and leaves it there, turning the volume down so it’s only background noise as he pulls Bucky onto his chest, and presses a kiss to his temple.

“You okay?” Steve asks softly. Bucky sighs.

“Yeah,” he says, “it’s just...” Bucky trails off, and gestures around broadly. Steve kisses his cheekbone.

“Yeah,” Steve echoes, “I know.”

Bucky tucks himself further into Steve’s side, and reaches up to trace over the bridge of his nose.

“Tell me something I don’t know about you,” he murmurs. Steve smiles at him, and keeps still so Bucky can keep running a finger up and down his nose.

“Something like what?” he asks.

Bucky watches his own finger pass over the bump in Steve’s slightly crooked nose, and asks, “Who broke your nose?”

Steve laughs. “Which time?” he asks.

Bucky narrows his eyes. “How many times have there been?”

Steve thinks about it for a few seconds. “Three?” he answers, like he’s not sure how many times a part of his body has been painfully broken.

Bucky shakes his head at the ridiculous man he loves. “The first time?”

“Connor Sanders,” Steve says. “Second grade. He called Evelyn Frye a ‘poopy face,’ and she cried. I punched him, and he punched me back. He was a lot bigger than me, I was very small.”

Bucky chuckles. “The second time?” he prompts.

“Roy Hogarth,” Steve answers immediately. “Freshman year of high school. He was a junior. Said something racist, and I told him to knock it off. He decked me. I was still very small, but I’d figured out how to fight by then, so I at least gave him a good shiner before the vice principal intervened.”

“And the third?” Bucky asks, trying and failing to hold back his fond smile.

“Carla Eldridge,” Steve says. “Police academy. It was a training exercise accident.”

“Ouch,” Bucky winces.

Steve shrugs. “I was pretty used to it by then.”

“Apparently,” Bucky agrees, laughing, and Steve grins and kisses him.

🎈

The next day, they drive around for a while, but end up checking into a hotel in Evanston, just North of Chicago, in the middle of the afternoon — a trip that would have only taken about three hours or so if they’d taken a direct route. They’re both kind of exhausted from the last five days of traveling, but even though Jarvis suggested taking a week to get to Canada, Bucky wants to take a full two, and Steve has deferred to Bucky’s judgement. But it means they have over a week left before they’ve even crossed the border, and they’re already tired, so they agree to take it easy tonight.

They find an old-fashioned diner to get an early dinner, and after they’ve ordered, Steve looks across the table at Bucky with bright, attentive eyes, and says, “Tell me something I don’t know about you.”

Bucky smiles at his own request being leveled back at him. “I used to bartend for a living,” he says, pulling out the first thing he can think of.

Steve looks sufficiently impressed. “Really?” he asks, and Bucky nods, leaning back in his booth seat.

“In Indiana, before I enlisted,” he explains. “It’s how Nat and I made a living, we both bartended at the same bar.”

“No shit,” Steve says, grinning. “Could you make me a good drink?”

“I could,” Bucky confirms, smirking back at Steve. “It was a tiny little town, so there was only the one bar, but the owner took a lot of pride in it, so it was a pretty quality place. I wasn’t the friendliest guy when she hired us — Nat was better at that. But Hydra’d kept me very out of it for years, and they taught _her_ how to seamlessly integrate into a community. Anything I knew about that kind of op was pretty much the first thing to go when I started being a person again, so I was surly and standoffish. But the owner really took a chance on us, because she knew we needed it. Didn’t ask many questions or do a background check on us — which was good, because we hadn’t fully set up our new identities yet. I had one too many panic attacks on the job, and I thought for sure she was gonna fire me, but she didn’t. She said I made a mean cocktail, and she could handle a little meltdown every now and then, so long as I kept trying. I did, and it taught me how to interact with people again.”

“Damn,” Steve breathes, smiling softly at Bucky across the table as Bucky lifts his water to take a drink. “I’m really glad I know that about you now.”

🎈

It becomes a thing. Every now and then, one of them will ask the other to tell them something they don’t know about each other, and as they ask, they learn more and more. The request quickly shortens from, “Tell me something I don’t know about you,” to just, “Tell me something.” And as they learn more about each other, Bucky finds himself somehow falling even more in love with Steve, something he didn’t think was even possible.

Their seventh day on the road is Thanksgiving. They’re in Louisville, Kentucky tonight, and Steve surprises Bucky by talking his way into getting them a table at an upscale restaurant, where they’re served an entire Thanksgiving feast. Bucky — who has spent the last five Thanksgivings volunteering at the center’s yearly dinner for LGBTQ folks without accepting families — cries halfway through the meal, a mixture of missing the folks he usually serves tonight, which often includes a few of his favorite kids, and gratitude for Steve finding a way to make this holiday nice for him, despite circumstances that might have made it miserable. Steve comes around the table to kneel next to him, and hold him until the tears stop, and Bucky kisses him deeply. He’s pretty sure more than one other diner thinks Steve must have just proposed, and he’s fine with letting them carry on with that assumption.

He’s just so fucking grateful for the love of this man.

🎈

There’s something about spending nearly every moment of every day with another person, Bucky thinks, that teaches you things about them, and yourself, you never would have known before. For example, he’s learned that when Steve is thinking hard enough, he mouths out his thought process to himself without realizing it. And when Bucky is feeling grumpy or sad, he gets prickly, but he’s discovered that almost the _moment_ Steve starts absently rubbing his back, like he’s not even thinking about it, Bucky melts into a sweet puddle of warmth for him.

But on the tenth day of their lengthy, aimless road trip, they both learn something terribly unexpected.

“Tell me something,” Steve says when they’re lying in bed, snuggled together after a giggly and deeply satisfying round of fucking. Bucky casts around in the post-orgasm goo that should be his brain for something he could share that Steve doesn’t know.

What he settles on is very dull: “I was born at Maimonides Medical Center in Borough Park,” he says, only slurring a _little_ , which is a feat of great strength, if he says so himself. It’s an extremely boring fact, but he hasn’t mentioned it yet, so it counts, okay?

What Bucky doesn’t expect is for Steve to pull back and frown at him.

“What?” Bucky asks stupidly at this very weird response to being told the very benign detail of where Bucky first entered the world.

But Steve is blinking rapidly at him. “You were born at Maimonides?” he asks.

Bucky frowns right back at him. He _just_ said as much, didn’t he? “Yeah,” he grunts, and Steve’s eyes go huge, for some reason.

“ _I_ was born at Maimonides,” Steve tells him, and _oh._ Bucky now gets the surprised look on Steve’s face, because he’s mirroring it right back at him.

“No way,” Bucky says.

“Yeah,” Steve confirms.

“You mean to tell me we were born in the same hospital?”

“A year and four months apart, yeah.”

“Did you grow up in Borough Park?” Bucky asks. He knows Steve’s a Brooklyn native, but they haven’t yet gotten to the specifics of what neighborhood he grew up in.

“No,” Steve tells him, “but not far. My mom and I lived in an apartment in Flatbush until she died, and then I moved close to where my current place is in Clinton Hill. What?”

Bucky’s eyes have widened even further, and he’s pushed himself up to stare down at Steve in disbelief.

“My parents and I lived in an apartment in Flatbush when I was little,” he says. “That apartment I told you about that was half taken up by my mom’s piano? That was in Flatbush.”

“You did not!” Steve gasps. “We both lived in Flatbush when we were born?”

“Apparently,” Bucky says weakly. “Which means for two years at the beginning of our lives, we lived in the same _neighborhood_.”

Steve is quiet for a second. Then he asks, almost like he’s hesitant to hear the answer, “Where in Flatbush? Do you remember?”

“I mean, I was _three_ when we moved to Wakanda, Steve,” Bucky tells him flatly, “I don’t _remember_. But,” he adds slowly, “my parents did tell me where it was when I asked once, and I went back to see the building.”

“And?” Steve asks. And this is ridiculous, they’re both acting like they’re dreading something, like finding out they used to live close to each other as babies has any actual impact on their lives now.

“Corner of Dorchester and Sixteenth,” Bucky says, and pales when Steve’s mouth drops open. “Don’t tell me that was down the street from you?”

Steve shakes his head. “Not down the street,” he says quietly. “That was the _building_ I lived in!”

Bucky sits up all the way, and Steve comes with him.

Every other corner of that intersection is occupied by a house, not an apartment building.

“Are you _fucking_ kidding me?” Bucky demands, while Steve starts laughing. “You tellin’ me that until I was three and you were two, we lived in the _same fuckin’ building?_ ”

“You sound ridiculously Brooklyn right now,” Steve cackles.

“This ain’t funny!” Bucky cries, but Steve’s laughter is contagious, and he’s smiling despite himself. “This is fuckin’ nuts! Your ma mighta known my ma!”

“How is it you have like no accent, and suddenly you get worked up and sound like a fuckin’ newsie?” Steve asks, laughing even more.

“ _Steve!_ This is serious!”

Steve lets out one more loud bark of laughter, and then tries to compose himself, wiping tears out of his eyes. “Sorry,” he says. “I don’t see why it’s so serious, though.”

“ _Babe_ ,” Bucky insists, “when we met, I was in a bar down the street from your house.”

“Yeah? And?”

“I’d never been to that bar before the night I met you,” Bucky says. Steve sobers up a little more at that. “I live and work on the other side of Prospect Park. I was there by fuckin’ _fate_ , because I’d had a rough day, and I just got on the G train an’ let it take me until I felt like getting off an’ finding somewhere to drink, an’ maybe flirt a little. I did not expect to find _you_.”

“Okay,” Steve relents, considering this, “so both of those make a kind of weird coincidence—”

“Your best friend is my ex-girlfriend, and neither of us knew that until we’d been dating for two an’ a half months.”

“Oh. Right.”

Bucky reaches up and takes hold of Steve’s chin with his left hand, tenderly stroking the bearded line of Steve’s jaw with his vibranium thumb. “You saved my life ten years go,” he breathes. “You didn’t know my name, and I didn’t know yours. We didn’t see each other’s faces. And somehow, we found each other anyway.”

Steve’s smile is soft this time. “Yeah,” he says quietly. “Okay, so it’s a _lot_ of very weird coincidences.”

“You think it’s just coincidence?”

Steve shrugs. “Maybe it is fate,” he concedes. “Maybe there’s some cosmic force pushing us together. I’m very, _very_ okay with that, pal.”

Warmth rushes through Bucky’s body at the look on Steve’s face. He still feels a little freaked out by the whole thing, but when Steve puts it like that, well—

“Me too,” he whispers.

🎈

Time passes like this, and after what feels like both an eternity, and the blink of an eye, it’s the thirteenth day of their journey.

Bucky squeezes some of the last tiny little bit of toothpaste out of the tube they’ve been sharing and onto his toothbrush, trying not to feel annoyed that Steve uses _so much goddamn toothpaste_ — just another fun thing Bucky has learned about his beautiful, kind, chaotic boyfriend on this road trip — saving just enough to use in the morning, if Steve is frugal with it.

He says as much to Steve, in his Stern Dad voice and with a pointed finger, when he comes out of the bathroom with his glasses on and his hair tied up at the top of his head.

“We’ll get some more tomorrow,” Steve promises.

“Okay,” Bucky agrees, “but we have to both be able to brush our teeth in the _morning_ , okay? I love you so much, but your morning breath is vile.”

Steve looks touched, weirdly. “You kiss me before I brush my teeth,” he says in a soft, small voice.

“Yeah,” Bucky says, grinning, “because, as I mentioned, I love you _so much_.”

“You really do!” Steve cries, flinging his arms wide so Bucky can climb into them, laughing.

Once Bucky is settled in Steve’s arms, he takes his glasses off and hands them to Steve, who folds them gently and places them on the bedside table before he turns off the light.

“So,” Steve begins before they can fall immediately to sleep, “tomorrow makes two weeks.”

“It does,” Bucky replies. “And we are in Michigan.”

Steve kisses his hair, then asks into it, “You ready to cross the border tomorrow?”

Bucky tilts his head up, and catches Steve’s mouth. “Yes,” he murmurs against Steve’s soft lips. “Thank you for being patient.”

“Anything for you, Buck,” Steve says.

And Bucky knows, with everything in his being, that Steve means it.

🎈

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **Next time:**   
> 


	14. Fourteen: December 3rd

Bucky wakes up on Thursday evening when Steve pulls into the parking lot of yet another mid-level hotel.

“Hey, sunshine,” Steve’s voice greets him, low and rumbling. Bucky glances over to see Steve’s warm eyes gazing down at him, and his heart flips the way it always does when Steve looks at him with softness like this. “You have a nice nap?”

Bucky sniffs and swallows, blinking as he sits up in his seat. “Yeah,” he says. His voice comes out in a rasp. “How long have I been asleep?”

“Little over two hours,” Steve tells him, reaching over to lay a big hand over Bucky’s hairline, and rub his forehead with his thumb. Bucky fell asleep something like an hour and a half after the border, which must mean—

“Are we in Toronto?” Bucky asks.

Steve nods. “Just outside, actually.”

“Gotcha.”

“Hungry?”

Bucky thinks. “Yes,” he decides after a few seconds listening to his body.

Steve’s eyes crinkle at him. The way Steve looks at him — it strikes at his heart. It’s like Bucky can see straight into Steve’s own heart like this, and everything he sees there is just radiating, shining love, directed right at him. It’s blinding, and overwhelming, and so, so wonderful.

“You wanna go inside, check in, and then we can find some place to go get food?” Steve asks. Bucky loves him.

“Sounds good, babydoll,” he mumbles, reaching up and taking Steve’s hand off his head so he can twine their fingers together instead, pressing a kiss to Steve’s fingers as he does.

The process of checking in has become so normalized for them these days, that they’re in the room and dumping their bags before Bucky’s brain shifts out of autopilot.

“What kind of food are you feeling?” Steve calls to him from the bathroom, where, presumably, he’s fixing his hair — which is starting to get long, and curling just a little at the ends, and Bucky is _obsessed_ with it.

“Thai, maybe?” Bucky suggests. He doesn’t have a strong preference, but the more awake he feels, the hungrier he gets, and they need to make a quick decision so he can get food as soon as physically possible. Bucky has learned by now that if he tries to leave a decision like this up to Steve, Steve will just give him fifty options, and try to divine which one Bucky secretly wants the most when Bucky says he’s fine with anything. It’s very sweet, since he only does it because he wants Bucky to get everything he could possibly want, but it does slow things down significantly.

Steve walks out of the bathroom, all hot and huge and wearing fresh clothes, and smiles, slipping his arms around Bucky’s waist, and ducking to press kisses against his neck as he murmurs, “Thai it is, then.”

“Okay, but we can’t do _this_ right now,” Bucky protests, without much heat behind it, as Steve’s fingers skate under his shirt and over his sides.

“Just helpin’ you get changed, gorgeous,” Steve tells him innocently as his mouth continues to travel slowly down the slope of Bucky’s shoulder.

Bucky laughs, and is about to argue that _no_ , Steve is _clearly not_ just trying to help him get changed, when his stomach does the arguing for him by loudly rumbling. Steve bursts out laughing against Bucky’s collarbone.

“Okay, okay,” he relents, pulling away, but planting a kiss to Bucky’s forehead before totally letting go of him. “Let’s go get some food. I want that fried rice with the raisins and pineapple.”

Bucky is hungry enough not to do much research, and just googles the nearest Thai food restaurant on the way back down to the car.

Unfortunately, when they get there, they find that this particular restaurant seems to be the hotspot in town tonight. Steve has to shoulder his way through a crowd to get to the host stand. When he comes back to Bucky, waiting by the front door, he leans in close to tell him, “Thirty minutes. Is that okay?”

Bucky is about to tell Steve that yes, he can wait a half hour to eat without actually dying, when Steve suddenly looks past him, his eyes widening in shock.

“ _Clint?_ ”

Bucky frowns, and turns around to see whoever Steve is looking at, despite having no earthly clue who Clint even is. But he does catch sight of a lanky man with sandy-blond hair, who looks like he may never be fully in control of all of his limbs, grinning widely at Steve, and waving a little frenetically.

“Cap!” Clint cries happily, skipping up to them. Bucky can’t remember the last time he saw a grown man _skip_. “What are you doing here? And who’s the hottie?”

“Jesus Christ,” Steve mutters, laughing a little under his breath. “I’m so sorry,” he says softly to Bucky, before turning back to the skipper. “Clint, this is my boyfriend, and we’re on vacation. What are _you_ doing here?”

Clint doesn’t question the fact that Steve very obviously did not tell him Bucky’s name as he starts explaining to Steve why he’s in Canada, a fact that bristles at Bucky’s scruff. Clint may exude a chaotic, scattered energy, that one could presumably see from space, but something about the way he glossed over Steve’s rather obvious omission feels incredibly intentional. And that feels _incredibly_ suspicious.

Luckily, Steve seems to pick up on the same thing — although he doesn’t seem as worried about it as Bucky is — because it only takes a minute of Clint babbling before Steve suggests getting their food to-go, so they can all go back to Steve and Bucky’s hotel room, and “catch up.”

Bucky gives Steve a Look as soon as they get in the car together. Clint is following in his own car, so they’re alone. Steve glances over at him, and grimaces slightly.

“That’s Clint,” he says unhelpfully.

“Yeah, I got that,” Bucky replies. “You trust him?”

“Yes,” Steve replies immediately. “He may be pretty unconventional—” Bucky scoffs lightly at the understatement, before Steve continues, laughing, “—but I’d trust him with my life. Have, in fact, a few times, and he’s lived up to the call.”

Bucky’s lips flatten into a thin line, but he nods. He trusts Steve. “Okay,” is all he says. And then they both fall silent for the remaining four-and-a-half minutes it takes to get back to their hotel.

Clint pulls up in the empty space next to theirs, and instantly starts chattering again when he gets out of his car. He barely leaves room for either Steve or Bucky (if he was so inclined) to speak at all, just goes on and on about absolutely nothing. And he doesn’t use Steve’s name once, Bucky notes. He only calls him ‘Cap,’ never Steve.

Could be that’s just what Clint calls Steve, Bucky supposes.

Maybe.

Until they finally get upstairs, and Steve uses his key card to get them all into the hotel room, and the heavy door shuts behind them. Because then, Clint immediately turns to Steve, and says to him, in a deceptively cheerful voice, “Hang on, Steve, you dorkazoid, you didn’t tell me your boyfriend’s name!”

And _ah_ , so the Cap thing _was_ intentional.

Clint is sticking his hand out to Bucky now, grinning.

“I’m so sorry,” he says quickly, his words all tripping over each other in haste, “I was so surprised to see my old pal, Steve, I didn’t even realize, I’m such a birdbrain! Clint Barton.”

“Bucky,” Bucky says simply, omitting the surname on purpose. Steve may trust this unwieldy weirdo, and Bucky may trust Steve’s judgement, but Clint’s behavior has been nothing but shifty and veiled, and Bucky isn’t about to give him any more details than absolutely necessary. Then he turns the questions back on Clint by asking, “How do you and Steve know each other?”

“Clint was in my SOF squad in the army,” Steve tells Bucky. And then, when Bucky turns to look at him, he raises his eyebrows significantly and adds, “And he _didn’t_ work for the CIA for a while.”

Clint makes a face like _Steve_ is the weirdest one in the room right now, unpacking all of their food onto a towel Steve has spread on the bed. “That’s an exceptionally weird way to introduce people, Steve, even for you,” he says. If Bucky were anyone else — if he had _anyone_ else’s life — he might actually be fooled by Clint. That’s how good his Bumbling Idiot act is.

But Bucky is Bucky, and he had his own life, and he can smell Clint’s bullshit from here.

While Clint launches into what Bucky assumes is probably a funny anecdote about something that he and Steve experienced in the army together — it’s hard to actually tell, because Clint can’t seem to keep to a single storyline, stops to laugh at his own memories every few dozen words, and seems to forget what story he’s actually telling halfway through — Bucky eats, and watches Steve. Steve is listening to Clint, and laughing with him, and every now and then glancing over at Bucky apologetically, but Bucky also sees the way Steve’s eyes narrow at Clint whenever Clint isn’t looking at him. That’s good, that Steve seems to realize his friend is very clearly trying to obscure his true intentions.

Finally, Steve cuts into Clint’s rambling with, “And it turned out, the people in that town knew who we were all along.” He’s laughing at the memory, but Bucky suspects he’s trying desperately to bring Clint back to the punchline.

It works, and Clint guffaws, finally concluding his tale with, “Right! So Thor didn’t even need to be dressed like a woman at all!”

For the briefest of moments, Bucky feels a little sad he wasn’t able to track the rest of the story, because _who is Thor and why did he feel the need to dress like a woman on a spec op?_ But the feeling passes quickly as Steve interrupts Clint before he can launch into another tale.

“So what are you doing here, Clint?” he asks. “I didn’t quite catch it at the restaurant.”

“Oh!” Clint shouts through a mouthful of pad thai, spewing a partial bean sprout out of his mouth and across the room disgustingly. “Okay, so this is _wild_ , right? There’s this _goose_ —”

And off he goes again, into something unintelligible to mortal men.

Steve tries hard, this time, to keep Clint on topic, but every time he tries to clarify again why, exactly, Clint is in Canada, Clint launches again into a rambling story about geese, of all things, diverting into rabbit trail after rabbit trail until, by the end, most people probably would have either just stopped listening, or forgotten the original point of the story altogether.

Bucky isn’t most people. And what he hears is an extremely skilled deflection of motive, masked in scattered incompetence. Clint is _good_.

Clint is hiding something.

Steve seems to understand that, too, and finally just cuts Clint off mid-sentence with a, “Come on, Barton.”

He says it in this _voice_ — this calm, authoritative, _disappointed_ voice — that makes even Clint stop abruptly, looking chastised. Bucky is very glad, in this moment, that Steve wasn’t _his_ captain in the army, because if this is his Captain Voice, Bucky would have been half-hard _all_ the time — and he already had trouble staying off his knees back then. It’s _extremely_ arousing.

Luckily, Steve isn’t looking at him to see that in his eyes, because he’s staring down Clint, who has the decency to at least look contrite while he says, feigning innocence, “What, Cap?”

“What are you doing here?” Steve asks yet again. “Why are you in Canada, in the same town as me and Bucky?”

“I’ve been trying to tell you—!”

“No, you haven’t,” Steve says, still in that voice. Bucky shifts to try to cover the situation happening in his pants. This is _not the time_. “You think I don’t _know_ you? This is no coincidence, Clint. Did Nat send you?”

Clint frowns in confusion, keeping up the act rather impressively. “Why would Nat send me on a literal wild goose chase?” he asks like Steve is being stupid.

“You know Nat?” Bucky hears himself asking before Steve can keep ripping into Clint’s motives. He didn’t mean to, but the fact startled him.

Clint’s face lights up. “Yeah!” he exclaims excitedly. “Nat’s my best friend! We used to date _years_ ago, but now we’re just friends.”

“Huh,” Bucky says, sizing Clint up. Then he grins, catlike. “Same.”

It’s so incredibly satisfying watching Clint’s face drop into the first genuine look of surprise Bucky has seen on him. It morphs quickly from pure, unadulterated shock, to a frown of wary confusion as he says, with a casualness that wobbles for the first time, “Really? I didn’t know she dated a Bucky.”

Bucky shrugs. He’s _deeply_ tempted to say, ‘ _Yeah, well, I used to go by James,_ ’ so he can watch the realization dawn across Clint’s face. Because he knows for a fact that Clint came after him, and if Clint thinks he knows all of Nat’s former partners, then he has certainly heard of _James_.

But that’s fucking _petty_ and _stupid_ , because Bucky is _on the run,_ and can’t go giving out his given name to random strangers, even ones Steve knows and trusts. So, reluctantly, he holds his tongue.

However, Clint’s uncomfortable squirm at not knowing who Bucky really is to Nat is a pretty decent consolation prize. Bucky smiles serenely at him.

Until Steve pulls them both back to the actually important point, here, by saying to Clint, “You didn’t answer my question. Which leads me to conclude that she _did_ send you.” He tilts his head, and squints at Clint — who’s dropped into a defensively blank expression, his body language relaxed, but the set of his jaw betraying his tension — working through the equation without Clint’s help. “Probably to make sure we’re okay, is that it?” Steve tuts. “That doesn’t explain why you’d let me see you, though, because of course I’d figure out you were tailing us—”

Steve cuts himself off this time, his face opening into a startled realization. “Oh,” he breathes, like he understands now. “Unless we’re _not_ okay. Unless something’s wrong.”

Clint and Steve just stare at one another for a minute, challenging each other, and Bucky thinks he sees an entire conversation’s worth of communication pass between them in that stare.

Finally, Clint shrugs, the tension disappearing from his face and his body, and he leans down onto his elbow, where he’s seated on the foot of the bed. “You’re reading _so_ much into this, Cap,” he laughs. ‘Cap’ again. “It’s just a _really_ weird coincidence.”

“Hm,” Steve hums, but nods carefully. “A coincidence. Right.”

Whatever passed between them, they both seem to have decided to just go along with Clint’s act now. It prickles at Bucky’s skin, and he wonders how much trouble they’re really in if Steve and Clint don’t even want to acknowledge it to each other here, in private.

They drop the subject then, and go back to eating and chatting. Clint doesn’t ramble so much anymore, and actually leads the conversation with a kind of natural mastery, keeping it from getting too deep or too awkward, asking enough questions without it being an interrogation, and even managing to include Bucky in it, though Bucky doesn’t offer up much in terms of details about anything at all. That seems to be the way Clint wants it, though, and they all finish their meal while maintaining a friendly, but surface-level conversation the entire time.

Steve even manages to relax as the next few hours pass, laughing with his friend, and telling Bucky about their old times together with a genuine levity. He does, though, maintain a physical link to Bucky the entire night — a hand on his ankle, a thigh pressed to his thigh, even drawing him in after their food is done with an arm around his waist. He’s still nervous.

Finally, Clint calls it a night, exclaiming his own exhaustion, and yawning to prove his point. Steve stands to give him a hug before he leaves, and just as Clint reaches the hotel room door, he turns back, as though just remembering to say something

“It’s just so fucking crazy that I ran into you up here!” he exclaims happily. “Especially since I just saw one of the guys from your old precinct yesterday!”

Bucky freezes. Ice shoots through his veins. He watches Steve’s shoulders stiffen.

“Who?” Steve asks, managing to keep his voice even and light.

Clint frowns like he’s trying to remember. “The tall, boring one,” he describes lamely. “Like—handsome, but just the most criminally boring person alive.”

There’s no recognition in Steve’s frown, so Clint sighs.

“Even had a boring name?” he prompts. “Joe, or John, or Jake, or—”

“Jack Rollins?” Steve asks, and Clint snaps his fingers and points at Steve excitedly.

“Yeah!” he cries. “That one! He was in the drug store when I went in to get Band-Aids. Didn’t seem thrilled to see _me_ , but who is?”

Clint laughs at his own joke, but his smile doesn’t reach his eyes. Steve doesn’t even try to smile back at him.

“Anyway,” Clint says, “I should go. Any chance of hanging out again while you guys are up here, or are you leaving soon?” It really is impressive how he manages to keep his voice sounding so nonchalant while he looks at Steve with that hardness around his eyes.

Steve nods, swallowing, understanding what Clint is trying to tell him. They need to leave. Soon.

“Sorry, Clint,” Steve says, his own voice only wavering slightly — not enough for anyone but Bucky, who is obsessed with him, to notice. “We’re only here for the night. Heading out first thing,” Steve adds, looking over his shoulder at Bucky, who nods his agreement.

Clint’s smile turns relieved as he says, “Ah, well. I’ll see you stateside, then, when we're all back, yeah?”

“Definitely,” Bucky tells him. He hopes Clint will take it as the thanks he intends it to be, and Bucky thinks he does, because when Clint grins at him, it meets his eyes.

Steve and Clint hug their goodbyes, and when Clint has left, Steve locks the chain on the door.

Bucky watches Steve come back to the bed to sit down facing him. Neither of them say anything for a minute, but Steve’s hand circles around Bucky’s ankle again, holding tighter than before.

Finally, Steve takes a deep breath, and looks at Bucky. “Did you check when we got here?”

He means for bugs. Bucky nods. “Are you worried?”

Steve bites his lower lip. “Yeah.”

“I’ll check again,” Bucky says, getting up to sweep the room again before Steve can say anything else.

Bucky was thorough the first time, but he’s extra careful now. Still, his results are the same. No sign of any recording devices, cameras, or anything else out of place in the room. Just in case, Bucky takes the clock off the wall, unplugs the phone and the alarm clock, gathers up any and all picture frames, and deposits the whole lot onto the floor in the hall, outside some other room’s door. While he does this, Steve unscrews all of the vent covers and checks inside the vents, then inspects all the lamps and lightbulbs. Neither of them speaks once during the search.

Both come up with nothing.

Once they’re both finally satisfied that no one is listening in, they quietly return to the bed.

Steve reaches out to take Bucky’s hand.

“Was Rollins in Hydra?” he asks without preamble.

“I don’t know,” Bucky admits. “I wasn’t privy to most people’s names, just code names. Call signs. No identities, with _very_ few exceptions.” The exceptions were Rumlow, Natasha (because _she_ told him her name), and his own grandfather. He didn’t know a single name beyond theirs and his own. And even his knowledge of his _own_ name was iffy for a few years.

Steve sighs. “Seems like too much of a coincidence for him to be here. And if Clint was ready to break his own cover to warn us—”

“You think he _had_ a cover?” Bucky asks. “It is not beyond Natalia Alianovna Romanova to put a secret tail on people she loves, just because she’s worried about them.”

Steve snorts at that, the line between his eyebrows softening a little. “I do know that,” he agrees. “But if it were _just_ that, I don’t think Clint would have outright refused to admit it. He knows me well, and obviously he knows how I work. He would have known I’d figure that out. No, I think he was taking a bigger risk by revealing himself to us, and that scares me more than anything.”

Bucky nods thoughtfully, sucking his own lower lip between his teeth in a mirror of Steve’s act from earlier. “Well, it doesn’t hurt to move on quicker than we planned,” he says. “We’ll go first thing, okay?”

“Before the sun rises,” Steve insists. “And we’re not flying out of Toronto anymore, we’ll go to Ottawa or something.”

“That’s fine,” Bucky agrees.

“And,” Steve starts, but then stops and frowns, pursing his lips and looking down at their joined hands. Bucky has come to understand that this expression is the one Steve makes when he wants to say something he’s worried Bucky won’t like to hear.

“What is it?” Bucky asks, smiling when Steve turns soft blue puppy-eyes up at him through long eyelashes. “You don’t have to do this, sweetheart,” he tells Steve reassuringly. “You can tell me anything, okay? ‘And’ what?”

Steve’s nostrils flare as he breathes in deep through his nose. “And,” he begins slowly, “I’m asking you to please reconsider Wakanda.”

Bucky blanches. He told Steve to tell him, knowing it was something Steve didn’t think he’d want to hear, he should have expected not liking it.

“I wouldn’t ask,” Steve tells him earnestly. “You know I wouldn’t. You said no when I asked the first time, and that would be the end of it, you _know_ that, right?”

Bucky nods. He does know that. Steve never pushes Bucky to do _anything_. Even things Bucky probably _should_ do. Not unless—

“I just don’t know if we can do this by ourselves,” Steve continues, stroking his thumb over the back of Bucky’s hand inside his. “Not anymore. I want to keep you safe, baby, and I promise I will. I just don’t know if we can stand up against all of Hydra alone.”

Bucky takes in a rattling breath, inhaling so deeply, it burns at his lungs. He knows Steve is right. But there’s so much there that he doesn’t know whether he can just surmount. There’s the shame of what he’s done, the grief of all those years he lost—and there’s the fear. The icy terror that strikes through his heart when he thinks of sheltering in the place he was taken from to begin with. Steve may believe in the security and safety of Wakanda, but Bucky doesn’t. He _can’t_. It failed him before when it wasn’t supposed to. What’s to stop it from failing him again?

But Bucky knows that Steve is right. It might not be perfect, but Wakanda _is_ safer than any other place in the world. Bucky knows that ever since he was kidnapped, the nation’s security measures were ramped up so high, it’s a completely different situation to what it was then. He knows that the very morning his parents woke up to find him gone, the _moment_ T’Chaka confirmed Bucky had been kidnapped by Hydra, everything had changed. He knows it happened instantly to keep Becca from being in the same danger. He knows they tried like hell to find him every single _day_ that he was gone.

He also knows they failed. They didn’t protect him. They didn’t find him. They didn’t save him.

But.

Steve waits for Bucky to process through all of this. He doesn’t speak, or try to make Bucky answer him faster. He just holds Bucky’s hand, and strokes his thumb comfortingly over the back of it, for the entirety.

And this man, sitting here in front of Bucky — _he’s_ the difference, isn’t he? Bucky is sitting here, in a hotel room in Canada, because _this man_ decided to devote his entire fucking future to keeping Bucky safe. He’s here because Steve asked him to run. Because Steve gave everything up to come with him. Because Steve goddamn Rogers loves him, Bucky has half a chance to begin with. Maybe if Steve is there—maybe it can be different, this time.

Finally, Bucky looks up into Steve’s impossibly blue, impossibly true eyes, wets his lips, and nods.

The relief that crests over Steve’s face just about breaks Bucky’s heart. He feels, suddenly, so terribly guilty that he’s been making Steve carry the burden of his safety alone. Of course he can go back to Wakanda to ease the burden for Steve, of _course_ he can.

“Okay,” Bucky whispers his assent, and he feels the rush of it when Steve beams at him.

“Thank you,” Steve gushes, lifting Bucky’s hand to his mouth to kiss it again and again, and then darting forward to kiss his mouth, too. “Thank you, baby.”

Bucky feels his lips twitch into a smile. “I love you,” he murmurs against Steve’s perfect mouth.

“I know,” Steve tells him. “I know you do. I love you, too, honey.” And then he kisses Bucky again.

A minute later, when Steve finally pulls back — brushing his nose tenderly against Bucky’s first — Bucky sniffs.

“I’ll make the call,” he says.

“Now?”

“Yeah,” Bucky confirms. He ought to do it now, before he loses his nerve.

Steve looks Bucky over, and squeezes both of his hands. “Do you want some privacy?” he asks.

“Yeah, I—” Bucky stutters. “I think so. Yes.”

Steve nods, understanding, and stands up, still holding Bucky’s vibranium hand. “I’ll go take a shower,” he says. But Bucky looks up quickly, and pouts at him.

“Without me?” he asks in his best pitiful voice, making Steve laugh.

“Okay,” Steve concedes, shaking the hand still in his. “I’ll go _start_ the shower. Join me when you’re ready.”

And with that, and a quick peck to Bucky’s lips, Steve goes into the bathroom, leaving Bucky alone.

It only takes a few seconds for the water to turn on — presumably because Steve is giving Bucky the sound cover to make his phone call without Steve listening in — but Bucky waits for the sound before he pulls his Stark phone out of his pocket.

He has this number memorized, even after all this time, and he dials quickly, like if he taps the numbers fast enough, his brain won’t have time to realize what he’s doing and stop him. He hits send just as quickly, for the same reason.

It doesn’t take very long for someone to answer. Very few people in the world have this highly-protected number, so when it’s called, it’s usually important.

“Hello?”

It’s been years, but the familiarity of that voice shoots through Bucky like scorching fire.

“Hi,” he answers lamely. “Um. It’s me. It’s—”

“Bucky,” the man on the other end of the call answers. He sounds stricken.

“Yeah,” Bucky says. His throat feels tight. “Hi.”

There’s a pause on the other end. Then: “I haven’t heard your voice in almost—”

“Six years,” Bucky finishes. _Hurts, hurts, hurts, all his fault_. “I know. I, um...I need help.”

There’s only a beat this time, hardly a pause at all, before, “Where are you?”

“Outside of Toronto.”

“Are you safe?”

“For the moment, yes.” Bucky swallows, and then admits, “In general, no.”

“Until morning?”

“We can be.”

“We?”

“Me and...my partner,” Bucky says. He hears the other man hum.

“And you trust them?”

“Completely.”

“Very well,” the man says, pragmatic like he always has been. “She’ll need your exact coordinates.”

“Of course,” Bucky agrees. “She’ll reach me?” There’s no number to call for her.

“She will. I’ll send her as soon as she’s able to leave.”

“Thank you, T’Challa,” Bucky says. His voice comes out quiet and small.

He can hear a huff of breath down the phone. “Don’t thank me, Bucky,” T’Challa insists. “Keep yourself safe until she gets to you.”

He pauses again, and Bucky wonders if T’Challa has more things he wants to say. Bucky sure does.

But all T’Challa says in the end is, “I will see you tomorrow.”

After T’Challa hangs up, Bucky lowers his own phone, and cradles it in his lap between both of his hands.

And he cries.

Steve is already in the shower when Bucky slips into the bathroom a minute later (after giving T’Challa’s head of armed forces their coordinates), naked, and wet, and _incredibly_ hot. And Bucky loves Steve so fucking much, because he doesn’t mention that Bucky’s eyes are wet and red, just quietly watches as he strips out of his clothes, and steps inside the large, glass-walled shower with him.

Steve does, however, immediately reach out and bring Bucky into his strong, solid arms, holding him and resting a big hand on the back of his head. He scritches Bucky’s scalp gently as he shifts them both, until Bucky is under the stream of water, and Steve is carding his fingers through Bucky’s hair as he gets it wet.

Bucky just lets him do this for a minute, leaning into Steve’s gentle touch, before he finally speaks.

“T’Challa’s sending a plane,” he tells Steve softly. “And his head of armed forces.”

“His _head_ of armed forces?” Steve asks, impressed, picking up Bucky’s curl-friendly shampoo. “This tonight, right?” he double checks, waving the shampoo, which warms Bucky’s heart. He only actually shampoos his hair once every two weeks or so, ‘washing’ it with just conditioner most of the time. But yes, today is a shampoo day, and Steve knows that, and that makes Bucky feel warm.

Bucky nods his answer to both questions, closing his eyes and letting out a soft little moan as Steve works the shampoo into his hair with strong fingers, massaging his head as he does.

“Yeah,” Bucky answers out loud, though it comes out a little more like another moan than he means it to. “And intel. I’m pretty sure he’s as worried about me as you are.”

“Did you tell him what’s going on?” Steve asks. His chest is pressed up against Bucky’s, Bucky’s arms looped loosely around Steve’s waist, and Bucky delights in feeling the comforting rumble of his voice through his chest.

“No,” Bucky replies as his muscles all start to loosen into jelly at the sensations of his love washing his hair. “But I guess when your surrogate brother, who spent seven years in captivity in his youth, avoids you like the plague for six years, and then calls you up and says, ‘I need help,’ that might raise some flags.”

He expects Steve to snort or laugh, but he just hums instead.

“That was supposed to be a joke,” Bucky tells him, not opening his eyes, as Steve guides his head to tilt back into the stream of hot water.

“No, I got that,” Steve retorts, and at least there’s a hint of amusement in his voice this time as he rinses Bucky’s hair. “Don’t really think he’s so wrong to worry.”

“Oh no, that, I agree with,” Bucky says, still trying for levity. Steve lets out one little chuckle this time, which is probably more humoring Bucky than anything, but he’ll take it. He doesn’t like when that crease makes a permanent home between Steve’s eyebrows. “She’ll be here in the morning.”

“The head of Wakandan armed forces?”

“Mhm.”

“Okay,” Steve murmurs. “That’s good.”

He finishes rinsing Bucky’s hair, and then cups the back of his head, drawing him in to a soft but deliberate kiss. Bucky loves Steve’s mouth more than anything else in the world, loves the taste of it on his tongue, even masked by shower water as it is now. When it opens so Steve’s tongue can slip into Bucky’s mouth, Bucky moans out loud.

“You’ve _gotta_ stop making those noises, honey,” Steve groans, circling the hand not on the back of Bucky’s head around his waist, and yanking him closer so he can press their hips together. He grinds the hard length of his cock, slick with precum and water, against Bucky’s pelvis, and makes Bucky’s cock instantly begin to fatten up from the respectable half-chub he’s had going just from having Steve’s hands on him.

“If this is how you’re gonna respond to the noises I make,” Bucky gasps out, his own hands scrambling at Steve’s wet, muscular back, “I’m _not_ gonna feel encouraged to stop.”

Steve growls into Bucky’s mouth, his beard scraping the sensitive skin around his lips, and Bucky’s cock is officially fully, enthusiastically hard. He goes limp as Steve turns them both, pushing Bucky up against the cold shower wall with his body, and swallowing Bucky’s hiss in his kiss.

“Well, if you’re not gonna stop,” Steve murmurs, low, between urgent kisses, “then I simply _can’t_ be held responsible for what I’m gonna do to you.”

Bucky shivers and grins, tilting his head to give Steve room to trail hot, scratching kisses down his neck. “That’s okay with me,” he sighs, then gasps at the scrape of Steve’s teeth against his throat.

After that, words become much harder for Bucky, devolving into nothing but moans and gasps and hisses as Steve methodically takes him apart with tongue and teeth and lips on his skin. When Steve spreads kisses down his chest, and down his stomach, dropping to his knees under the spray of water and taking Bucky’s cock all the way into his mouth, Bucky lets out something like a shattered sob, bucking his hips forward involuntarily before Steve takes them in his hands and pins them back against the wall.

Yeah, Steve’s mouth is _definitely_ one of Bucky’s top five favorite things in this world, he decides for the hundredth time, as the hot wetness of it swallows him down, keeps him safe inside his love, holds him there and loves him and— _fuck!_ —and constricts around him when Steve actually swallows around him once, twice, again.

Then Steve pulls back slowly, dragging his tongue along the underside as he goes, paying extra attention to the spot just under the crown, and Bucky’s hips try to thrust forward again, but Steve is still holding him firmly against the wall.

_God_ , Bucky loves this man. He loves him more than he’s ever loved _anyone_ , more than he ever realized he _could_ love someone. Bucky wants to keep Steve forever, wants Steve to be his for the rest of his life. He never thought he’d want to get married — in fact, he’s spent most of his life actively trying not to ever let anyone get close enough to even _consider_ the possibility. And maybe it’s absurd to already know he wants this with someone he only met four months ago, but _god_. Bucky wants a lifetime of this, a lifetime of Steve Rogers, and even more than that. He wants an _eternity_ with Steve. Wants to spend the rest of forever learning by heart the things that make up this man.

“Stevie—!” he grunts by way of warning as he feels the warmth in his gut constrict. But Steve just hums encouragingly, taking Bucky even deeper into his throat — his gorgeous beard scraping Bucky’s pelvis, the inside of his upper thighs — and swallowing again, and Bucky’s coming, spasming in Steve’s mouth and under his hands.

He may black out for a minute, because when Bucky comes back to himself, his eyes blink open to Steve’s smiling face back at his level. Steve kisses him deeply, and Bucky tastes the salt of his own cum in his mouth.

“Do you want me to—?” Bucky begins to ask, but Steve cuts him off with another deep kiss before he can finish offering to blow Steve in return.

“No,” Steve murmurs when he pulls away, sliding his hands from Bucky’s hips, back to his ass, and squeezing. “I’d rather…?”

He trails off, but his hands pull Bucky’s cheeks apart slightly, and his fingers dip into the space between, one brushing questioningly against his hole. Bucky moans, his eyes rolling back in his head, as he nods helplessly.

“Did you bring—?” he begins, but stops when Steve reaches toward the soaps and shampoos they brought, and grabs a bottle Bucky didn’t notice before. “When did you buy silicone lube?” he demands weakly, laughing.

Steve grins, and brushes his nose sweetly against Bucky’s. “Earlier, when we stopped for gas,” he replies, popping the cap open and slicking up his fingers while Bucky laughs harder.

But his laughter quickly turns into sharp, cut off moans when Steve’s fingers reappear at his hole, pushing into him two at once. And then even those noises are abruptly stopped when Steve’s tongue slips into his mouth again.

Steve’s tongue starts fucking Bucky’s mouth while his fingers are fucking into Bucky’s hole, and Bucky _melts_ , just this side of oversensitive, when the pads of Steve’s fingers rub against his prostate, his cock hard again at the relentless pleasure of it all.

Bucky’s noodle-limp by the time Steve pulls away just enough to spin him around, pushing him back against the wall front-first. And then Steve’s cock is pushing into him, thick and full, and everything Bucky could ever, ever hope for, dragging over Bucky’s sweet spot in a hellishly wonderful torture.

Maybe guessing that Bucky is not going to last very long like this at all, Steve begins pounding into him, hard and fast and dirty, and it’s all Bucky can do to stay standing as Steve rails him. He’s vaguely aware that he’s making loud, wrecked, keening noises, but he has no control over them whatsoever. And it isn’t long at all before a second orgasm is forced violently, deliciously, unexpectedly out of him.

Steve groans loudly as Bucky clenches around him, and then he’s coming, too, the both of them shuddering and jerking against each other, until they slump together against the wall, and Steve presses lazy, open kisses to the side of Bucky’s face.

They don’t linger too long after that, both exhausted from the traveling, the stress, and, now, the fucking. They finish cleaning themselves and each other, only stopping to kiss sweetly when their mouths pass close by. Bucky loves Steve more than anything else in the world, and he knows that Steve loves him just like that, too.

After he shuts the water off, Steve barely even dries himself off before he stumbles sleepily out of the bathroom and drops into bed, stark naked, with his hair dripping into his pillow.

Bucky has a more involved nighttime routine than that, and scrunches at his hair with the t-shirt he took off to get in the shower while he searches for the toiletry bag that was just his, but is now happily stuffed with both his products, and Steve’s.

He finds it in Steve’s suitcase, and starts digging through it for his hair gel, when an upsetting realization hits him.

They never got toothpaste.

Goddamnit.

Bucky stares dolefully into the toiletry bag for a minute, weighing his options.

They could just get toothpaste in the morning. But Steve sucked his dick not half an hour ago, and Steve’s morning breath will be heinous in a way that Bucky doesn’t want to deal with. He could call down for—no, he put the phone in the hallway. And he’s not going to bring it back in, just in case there _is_ a bug in it. Okay, so he can _go_ downstairs to the lobby, and ask the front desk for complimentary toothpaste. Except no, he can’t, Bucky remembers, because when they checked in, he definitely saw that little sign they’d put up that said, ‘ _We apologize for the inconvenience, the front desk is currently out of: Toothpaste, Razors, Tampons_.’

_Fuck_.

There’s only one thing for it, then. Bucky clocked a little corner store at the end of the block. It’s only two doors down from the hotel’s entrance, he can go get toothpaste, and be back in ten minutes.

Bucky digs a pair of sweatpants out of his suitcase, and slips into them and a t-shirt before he goes over to the bed. He leans over Steve, who has sprawled out like a starfish, his face buried in his pillow, and is fully on his way to being asleep when Bucky pets his wet hair, ducking down to press a kiss to his forehead.

“Hurmphluh?” Steve asks eloquently, snorting a little as he tries to look up at Bucky without opening his eyes. Bucky chuckles fondly at him.

“Shh,” Bucky breathes gently. “I’m gonna go get us some toothpaste, okay?”

“Mmphlgh,” Steve protests grumpily. “Cuddle.”

Bucky grins, and loves him. “I’ll come cuddle you as soon as I get back,” he promises. “I’ll be ten minutes. Fifteen, if there’s a line.”

Steve sniffs, still very much half-asleep. “‘Kay,” he mumbles, then his mouth immediately drops open again, and he may even snore a little.

Bucky giggles softly, and grabs his coat on his way out the door.

It’s _really_ fucking cold outside, Jesus Christ. Bucky wraps his coat further around himself, and digs his phone out of his pocket to hold in his hand as he strides across the twenty or thirty feet between the hotel’s front entrance and the door of the corner store.

That’s when it happens — while Bucky is glancing down at himself to pull his phone out of his pocket.

The first thing he feels is the sting. The pinprick of a needle as it pierces the skin of his neck, where Steve laid open-mouth kisses just thirty minutes ago. Then he feels hands on him, grabbing him roughly, painfully from behind, as whatever’s in the syringe burns through his veins.

He struggles as hard as he can, trying to throw himself out of the hold of his attacker, but more hands grab hold of him, and arms wrap around him, pinning his own arms to his sides as his phone falls from his grip.

And that’s the moment Bucky recognizes it: the feeling that’s flooding through his body, relaxing his muscles even as he strains to fight back. The detachment and euphoric warmth that drowns him as he struggles to remain present in his body. He knows exactly what he’s been injected with, and this isn’t the first time it’s been forced through his veins without his consent.

He almost sobs when he registers the heroin. God, he worked _so hard_ to break his dependence on this _fucking_ drug — a dependence he had no choice in at all — and he knows exactly what’s happening to him.

They found him.

They’re taking him back.

Vaguely, as he struggles to maintain consciousness, while multiple assailants fight him to the ground, Bucky realizes the heroin must be laced with an additional sedative. He’s losing consciousness too quickly, too severely, it doesn’t feel right. His body won’t fight back anymore, no matter how hard he tries to make it, and right before he completely loses the fight to stay awake, a sickeningly familiar face floats into his view as Brock Rumlow crouches down to leer smugly at him.

Bucky wishes his heart would race. Wishes adrenaline would rush through him. Wishes he could even feel _afraid_. But the numbness has claimed him. All he feels, as he stares down the face of his rapist and abuser of fucking _years_ —is detached. Distant.

“Hey there, little one,” Crossbones’ rasping, grating voice says from far away. “Told you I’d find you.”

And then there’s nothing.

Nothing at all.

...

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Happy ending, guys. Happy ending.
> 
> **Next time** :  
> 


	15. Fifteen: December 4th

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  **Warning:** By now, I assume you're familiar with the tags of this fic. The end of this chapter contains the most intense scene regarding the rape/non-con, threats of rape/non-con, and threats of violence tags. If you are worried that this scene may be triggering to you, feel free to skip to the end notes, where I have noted where you can stop reading to avoid this scene, and given a non-graphic description of what happens. Please note that this entire chapter does contain elements of the Winter Soldier Abuse Umbrella. Keep yourself safe!

When Steve’s mind rises into wakefulness, the first thing he notices is that he’s naked. The second is that it tastes like something crawled into his mouth overnight, and died there. The third is that for the first time in over two weeks, he isn’t waking up with all of Bucky’s limbs wrapped around him like a very needy baby sloth.

The fourth, when he blinks his eyes open, is that it’s morning.

And finally, the fifth thing Steve notices is that Bucky isn’t in bed with him at all.

That’s weird.

Steve listens for the sound of running water — maybe Bucky is in the bathroom — but hears nothing. And when he sits up to look towards the bathroom, he sees the door open, and the light off.

Something like fear pierces through Steve’s heart.

He’s too bleary to be able to understand if that’s a warranted reaction yet, so he scrubs the heels of his hands over his eyes and face, and stands up, trying to get some blood flow going.

Okay, he thinks to himself, here are the facts:

Fact one: Bucky isn’t in the bathroom.

Fact two: Bucky isn’t in the bedroom.

Fact three: That means Bucky isn’t this hotel room at all.

_Shit_.

Okay, Steve thinks, breathing very deliberately, hold on. Maybe Bucky’s downstairs, getting breakfast. Steve seems to have slept like the dead, so it’s possible Bucky got up and dressed, and went to get food without Steve hearing.

Except then Steve remembers fact four: They agreed to leave before dawn this morning.

And the sun is most _definitely_ up right now.

Panic starts to seize Steve, clenching inside his chest like an icy fist. He searches around for his phone, trying to stave off the way his lungs want to constrict by taking more measured, deliberately slow breaths, but he’s finding the process harder than it should be. Maybe Bucky is out meeting the security person who’s supposed to be flying them back to Wakanda. If that’s the case, or if plans have changed, Bucky will have texted Steve. Because Bucky knows that Steve would panic like this if he woke up and Bucky wasn’t there.

Which he has.

Steve finds his phone, after a few minutes of frantic searching, lying in the open, on the nightstand. But there are no texts from Bucky. There are no notifications at all.

Fuck. He unlocks his phone, and immediately calls Bucky. Maybe Bucky forgot to text, maybe he was just going downstairs for a second, maybe he’s on his way back right now.

It rings and rings, and nothing. No answer. Steve is sent to voicemail. He hangs up, and tries again, and while it’s ringing and ringing again, he remembers.

Bucky went out last night. He told Steve he was going to get toothpaste, and he left. And in his sleep, Steve assumed he meant he was going downstairs to ask at the front desk, but what if he wasn’t? What if he was going _out?_

Did he come back? Did Steve hear him come back? He can’t remember. Does that mean he didn’t? _Fuck!_

The call goes to voicemail again, and Steve curses loudly, hanging up so he can call again, and scrambling around for some clothes to put on his body so he doesn’t try to run downstairs and out into the street butt naked. He gets sent to voicemail again just as he’s yanking on a pair of jeans and the sweater he wore yesterday. He grabs his coat and shoes, and dials again as he runs out the door.

Steve gets his shoes on in the elevator, no socks, and when he reaches the lobby, he only pauses to cast around wildly for a sight of Bucky’s soft curls before he starts moving again. There are only two small groups in the lobby aside from employees, a family with three young children, and two distinguished-looking women who are, themselves, glancing around as though looking for someone. Steve darts past them on his way out the door, hitting the call button yet again.

There’s no one out here. No Bucky, no sign of him at all. One glance around the parking lot shows Steve that their car is where he parked it last night, so Bucky didn’t take it somewhere. Which, at this point, counts as a bad sign.

Steve is striding quickly down the sidewalk, scanning around for any sight of Bucky, and fighting the stinging tears that aren’t just from the wind cropping up in his eyes, when he steps on something that crunches.

Looking down, Steve sees it:

Bucky’s Stark phone, shattered on the sidewalk.

And that’s when the broken sob finally rips its way out of Steve’s throat, and his vision blurs as the tears win out.

He startles when a hand comes to rest on his arm, and looks up wildly with the outrageous hope that maybe it’s Bucky.

But, of course, it isn’t.

It’s one of the women from the lobby. Her features are soft, her dark brown hair twisted into many little knots all over her head. She looks up at Steve with wide, worried eyes, as he sniffs and tries to look anything other than absolutely feral in the face of her calm concern.

He expects her to ask him if he’s okay, but she doesn’t. Instead, in a warm, pleasantly accented voice, she asks, “Are you Steve?”

Steve frowns. No one is supposed to know that. He’s supposed to be Chris out here, that’s what his fake ID and passport say. But then his eyebrows shoot up as he realizes: “Are you from Wakanda?”

The woman nods. “You are Steve Rogers?” she asks again.

Honestly, admitting that to someone who _isn’t_ who he thinks she is could be life-threatening in this moment. But Bucky is gone, and he doesn’t know where, or how to get him back, or what to do. So Steve tells the truth.

“Yes, I’m Steve Rogers,” he blurts out. “Are you the head of Wakandan armed forces?”

“I am not,” the woman tells him, smiling softly in a way that Steve suspects is meant to be reassuring. “She is.”

The woman nods her head back behind them, and Steve turns to see the other woman — her features more severe, the expression on her face downright terrifying — standing just outside the hotel’s main entrance, watching them.

“My name is Nakia,” the woman with Steve tells him. “Tell me, Steve—where is Bucky?”

…

When Bucky comes to enough to register anything at all, the _first_ thing he registers is that he hurts. He’s upright, on his feet even though he’s been unconscious, and his arms are raised up above his head.

No. His wrists are _shackled_ to something above him. He’s not standing, he’s hanging by his wrists from the ceiling.

He’s high.

And he’s naked.

He knows, almost instinctively, that he hasn’t been raped yet, and a quick mental scan of his body confirms this to be true. But he also knows from experience that they’d want to do that while he was awake, anyway. While he was aware, and could feel it. He _also_ knows that this knowledge, and the fact that all of this is very much happening to him right now, should frighten him. Petrify him. But thanks to the smack they’ve forced into his bloodstream, all he can feel is mildly disinterested. He’ll be angry about that later, but he can’t manage it just yet.

He wonders how long he’s been out. He wonders if Steve has realized he’s gone.

He wonders if they’ll kill him before he gets to see Steve’s face again.

Probably. And they won’t kill him soon, either. Not Bucky. Not after what he did.

Not after he got away from them.

No, they’ll want him to suffer first. For a long time. They won’t let him go so easy this time.

Later, when he has more ability to think, Bucky will suspect that he drifts in and out for a few hours at this point, because the next time he’s aware of himself again, the pain has gotten ten times worse, and his mind is clearer. Which means the drugs are wearing off.

That’s…a bad sign, he thinks, trying to shift enough to get his legs under him. His natural shoulder is killing him, bearing so much of his weight as it is, but his legs are limp and numb, and he’s having trouble putting his weight on them.

He manages, after some struggle, to at least move enough to transfer some of the pull from his right shoulder to his left. The prosthetic is designed so that he only feels real pain from it when it’s taking severe damage, and, while he _can_ feel the stretch where the vibranium is pulling achingly at the seam of his skin, at least his prosthetic arm is not in danger of popping out of its socket the way his flesh arm is.

The movement, unfortunately, seems to wake his body up enough for it to realize how fucking _cold_ it is. Looking around, Bucky takes stock of his space for the first time.

He’s surrounded on three sides by solid concrete — five sides, actually, he notes through his fog, the arched ceiling above him, and the floor beneath his bare feet are concrete, too — and the small room he’s being kept in opens at one wall into a much larger space, also concrete. There are no windows that Bucky can see at all. He’s….

Underground. Probably. A bunker. And he’s alone, for now.

A glance up above him reveals his binds: thick manacles locked around his wrists, attached by chains to a sizable bolt in the ceiling. He tugs a little, experimentally, with his prosthetic arm. He’s not part-Superman or anything, but the vibranium is virtually unbreakable, and marginally stronger than his right arm. But there’s no give in the bolt at all — no wiggle or anything. He’s also still sedated, which doesn’t exactly aid in feats of strength, but Bucky doesn’t have any faith at all that they will allow him to be fully awake and sober, at the same time, at _any_ point before they have him back where they want him.

Which is another thing. He’s not in Russia. Not yet, anyway.

Sure, there are no windows, and he could feasibly be anywhere, but he’s stark naked and underground, in a room they have clearly stopped heating while he’s in it, and he’s not dead. He’s cold, yes, and his body is shaking uncontrollably with it — unless the tremors are just starting already, though he’s pretty sure it’s way too soon for that still, since he can still feel the effects of the drug — but he’s not hypothermic.

Although, maybe that’s just because they’re keeping him at a very specific temperature. They’ve done it before. Back when they first took him, in those years of foggy torture, and one more time, when he was being punished. Maybe Bucky’s wrong. Confused. Maybe they have already taken him to Russia, far beyond where Steve could ever reach him again. Maybe it’s all just foolish, naive hope that makes him think he’s still in Canada.

But he _really_ thinks he’s still in Canada.

Especially because, as he looks out at the big room off of his small one, he can _see_ his escape. There are no bars or barriers blocking this room from the big one, he has eyes on the hallway he knows has to lead to the exit from here, and just beyond this room, draped over an office chair that’s pushed into a desk with an outdated computer, is his own coat.

They’re taunting him.

They _want_ him to see his escape. They want him to know how easy it would be to just walk out and go, that there isn’t even anyone here to stop him — if only he could get out of these chains. If only he wasn’t drugged, and weak, and useless.

Bucky squeezes his eyes shut against the burning threat of tears. Okoye should be at the hotel by now. And Steve — he was special ops, he has ridiculous investigative skills, and he’s _brilliant_. They could figure it out. They could find him. They could come save him.

They just need a little time.

Time that Bucky has no idea if they have. Because once Hydra has him back in Russia—

It’s over.

The deafening scrape of metal and concrete startles Bucky out of his thoughts, and his eyes snap open. Voices are speaking in echoing Russian, far enough down the way, that Bucky can’t make out more than a few words here and there. Just ‘asset,’ ‘soldier,’ and ‘unlikely.’

And then, chillingly, Bucky hears the voice that still plagues his nightmares, calling out in English, clear as day, “I’m back, little one!”

Bucky’s briefly transported back to countless times he heard that exact sentence shouted at him as Crossbones came home to him in another life. He experiences the exact same jolt of pure fear, the exact same adrenaline rush of his body trying like hell to get him to flee, because it knows precisely the pain it’s about to receive.

Crossbones is drawing this out — his footsteps slow and loud, echoing around the bunker as he marches deliberately toward Bucky.

And then he steps into Bucky’s view at last, and plants his feet. He’s wearing that stupid fucking hood mask he always used to wear, with the idiotic skull design across his face, and a load of tac gear over his awful tank, his arms crossed over his chest.

“Well, well,” he says, then reaches up and pulls the mask off his head. He looks Bucky’s naked body up and down slowly, leeringly, and grins, shark-like. “If it isn’t the goddamn Winter Soldier himself.”

As dread fills like bile in his throat, Bucky thinks that he hasn’t felt this naked in a _long_ time.

…

They’re in a different hotel room now. Okoye made the change the moment Steve told Nakia, through tears, that Bucky was gone. Then she put a small, round, chrome device in the center of the room, and turned it on. It emitted a bright blue light that swept all the way around the room, and then let out a soft _ding_ , and she put it away without a word. Steve assumes the device detects bugs and other surveillance equipment, because as soon as it made its little ding, Okoye and Nakia started unpacking the bags Steve had originally assumed were just large purses. Now an entire war room is set up on the little table and desk of this very basic hotel room, computers and tech that Steve has no name for standing at attention as Okoye and Nakia furiously go back and forth between all of it with serious, intense expressions on their faces.

Steve, in the meantime, has his solitary little laptop open to a video call with Tony, who’s currently pinching the bridge of his nose and squeezing his eyes shut, while Steve begs him once again, “ _Please_ , Tony, where _is_ he?” even though he knows Tony doesn’t have an answer for him.

“He doesn’t have his phone on him, Steve,” Tony grumbles, exasperated, “which makes it pretty hard to trace him through his phone!”

“ _Tony_ ,” Steve pleads, and Tony makes a frustrated sound.

“I didn’t inject a tracker in him, Cap, I don’t know what to tell you!” he cries.

Steve knows that Tony is just as upset as he is that he can’t help, and that that’s why Tony is so frustrated with him. But he can’t stop himself from begging, he just can’t.

“Please,” Steve hears himself say for the twentieth, or fiftieth, or six hundredth time, and tears are starting to blur his vision again. “Please, Tony, _anything_. I’m desperate, I’ll take anything, _please_.”

Tony sighs, short and hard, and thinks. “Okay,” he finally says, not sounding overly hopeful, “give me a minute.” And then turns away from the camera Steve’s looking at him through, and starts typing at one of his many computers.

Okoye says something in Xhosa, and Nakia frowns before she replies. They’ve been doing this on and off for the last two hours since they found Steve, alternating between Xhosa and English. They’re obviously speaking English for Steve’s benefit, even when he’s not actively involved in their conversation, or doesn’t fully understand it because they’re referencing Wakandan technologies that he’s illiterate in. But every time they talk to each other in Xhosa, they have pinched, worried expressions on their faces. It’s clear to Steve that they’re keeping the worst from him. Probably because he’s already enough of a wreck as it is, and they don’t want him becoming so useless that it actually hinders their work.

They’ve been speaking to each other entirely in Xhosa for almost an hour.

Steve is on the verge of breaking.

“Okay,” Tony says suddenly, startling Steve out of his internal freak out and back to the screen, where Tony’s attention is at least half on him again.

“You found something?” Steve asks him, his desperation clear in his voice as he sits up suddenly straighter. _Please let him have found something, please please…._

“I’ve got satellite images of him outside the hotel at ten after midnight,” Tony says tersely, all business. “Looks like he got jumped by a group of six or seven guys, might’a been unconscious by the time they dragged him into a car — some black sedan, can’t tell the make or model. The rest of the guys got in a different car, and took off in another direction. Both cars were black, nondescript, disappeared into the night. I’m sorry, Steve,” he finishes, his voice and his expression turning soft, apologetic.

Steve sits still. He can’t tell if he’s breathing. His heart is breaking, sinking so fucking low at the thought that they really have _no_ leads at all. That Hydra really took Bucky away from him forever. That if he’d only woken the _fuck_ up when Bucky told him he was leaving, if he’d have just _gone with him_ —

Nakia looks up at Okoye, and interrupts Steve’s meltdown by asking her in English, “Can we do anything with that?”

Looking like she could win a fight against God by sheer force of will, Okoye nods. “We sure as hell can try.”

…

Brock Rumlow stalks toward Bucky like a predator, teeth bared in a hideous approximation of a grin that looks closer to a death grimace. Bucky’s heart rate speeds up in panic as he gets closer and closer.

“Stay the _fuck_ away from me, Brock,” he manages to croak out, though his voice is broken and gruff, and it hurts his throat to speak.

Crossbones laughs cruelly. He and Bucky both know that Bucky is in _no_ position to be making demands. He’s at the mercy of the monster before him.

Again.

“Oh, honey,” Crossbones coos mockingly, and Bucky blanches at the word _honey_ being leveled at him from Crossbones’ hideous mouth. “You’re hurtin’ my feelings here.”

Brock _never_ called Bucky honey, not ever. The first year Brock Rumlow was in Bucky’s life, they only ever spoke to each other in Russian, so every pet name that Crossbones mocked him with was a Russian one. Except for his favorite: _little one_. Brock doesn’t call Bucky _honey_ , he never has.

_Steve_ does. Steve has been calling Bucky honey since the second week they were dating. It falls like cherry blossoms from his lips when they’re in bed together. When Steve says, _honey,_ it sounds like, _I love you_. It sounds like, _forever_. From Brock Rumlow’s mouth, it sounds sour, and bitter, and _wrong_. It’s a perversion. A blasphemy. A profanity.

Bucky thinks about the conversations he used to have with Steve while Steve was at the office. The calls he’d get from Steve’s work phone right before he left for the day, letting Bucky know where and when to meet him. He thinks of how Steve always ended every single one of those calls with some variation on, “I can’t wait to see you, honey.” Always honey, always.

Brock must have overheard.

The thought makes Bucky physically sick. It forces him to swallow against tears again. Can’t let Crossbones see him like that, can’t give him the satisfaction.

“How long have I been here?” Bucky demands, trying like hell to sound like he’s still got some fight left in him, trying like hell to force Crossbones to give anything away, anything at all. “Couple hours? Why did you bring me _here_ , why haven’t we left Canada?”

The last one is a gamble, Bucky admits. But it pays off when Crossbones’ eyes narrow almost imperceptibly. So they _are_ still in Canada. Thank _fuck_.

Crossbones must see the relief in Bucky’s eyes, weak enough as he is to not be able to hide it, because his expression goes sour and angry, realizing he gave something away. It’s like he’s forgotten the skills that _he_ helped Hydra force into Bucky.

His lip curls in a sneer, and he steps even closer.

Bucky hisses as he flinches, helpless to hide that, either. It tugs at his arms and hurts, and Crossbones’ sneer widens sinisterly as he steps forward enough that Bucky can feel his hot, rancid breath on his face.

“Don’t worry, _honey_ ,” Crossbones snarls, “we’ll bring you home real soon.”

He reaches out, and Bucky’s brain sets off an alarm of, _don’t touch me, don’t touch me, don’t touch me!_ , but he’s powerless. And Crossbones reaches around him, rough hands seizing him by the ass and yanking him forward until Bucky’s bare body is forced against Crossbones’ bulk, crushed painfully against his armor.

“Kept your body tight, didn’t you?” Crossbones taunts, clutching Bucky’s ass cheeks, and forcing them apart. “Always were a dirty little whore, just beggin’ to get fucked. Still got the prettiest ass I ever did see,” he adds, brushing a dry finger against Bucky’s hole and making him jerk away, though all that does is grind him further against Crossbones’ clothes, pressing him against Crossbones’ clearly erect dick.

Bucky does his best, held as tightly as he is, to twist, managing to knock Crossbones’ dick with his too-bony hip, enough that Crossbones bites out a yelp and releases him, lurching back.

His satisfaction at hurting the fucking bastard, though, is short lived, because Crossbones’ hand flies up, and viciously slaps Bucky across the face so hard, Bucky thinks he might have drawn blood.

“Hey!” Crossbones roars as he does. “You be nice, or I won’t wait to find some grease for you. You remember how it feels to get dry-fucked, don’t you? You wanna put yourself through that again?”

He’s bearing down on Bucky again, making to terrify him. But Bucky _refuses_ to do what this cruel, sadistic _monster_ wants him to do. So in this moment, he’s not afraid. He’s fucking _livid_.

Bucky lifts his chin defiantly, and spits in Crossbones’ face. Blood from the strike is mixed in with his saliva, dripping down Crossbones’ enraged face, and for a moment, Bucky is glad.

Then, Crossbones pulls back his fist, swinging it toward Bucky’s face.

Bucky feels the shock of pain right before everything goes black.

...

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **Next time:**   
> 
> 
> ** To avoid the more intense scene containing threats of rape and violence, stop reading after Okoye says, “We sure as hell can try.”
> 
> ** THE FOLLOWING IS A SPOILER FOR THE FINAL SECTION OF THIS CHAPTER:  
> Crossbones walks up to Bucky, who tells him to stay away from him. Crossbones calls Bucky 'honey,' which is something he never used to call him, and something Steve calls Bucky all the time. Bucky realizes that Rumlow must have overheard Steve call him 'honey' over the phone, and it makes him sick. Crossbones grabs Bucky and threatens him, and Bucky squirms away from him. Crossbones slaps him. Bucky is livid, and spits in Crossbones' face, and then Crossbones punches him and knocks him out.  
> **END OF SPOILERS**
> 
> [The National Sexual Assault Hotline](http://online.rainn.org/) provides support and resources to people who have been affected sexual violence. Anyone affected by sexual assault, whether it happened to you or someone you care about, can find support on the National Sexual Assault Hotline. It is confidential and safe. Call 1-800-656-4673, or you can visit [online.rainn.org](http://online.rainn.org/) to receive support via confidential online chat.


	16. Sixteen: December 5th

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It wouldn't be the darkest hour it if didn't get dark.

The morning after waking up to Bucky’s horrific absence, Steve goes for a walk.

More specifically, Steve is gently kicked out of the hotel room by Nakia, who suggests he go for a walk, and then locks the door behind him. He didn’t sleep, not for even a moment. Nakia and Okoye took shifts, one of them working tirelessly while the other slept, but Steve was just awake, and silent, and panicking, all night. He’s hyper aware that every minute that passes is another minute that Bucky is in danger, another minute he’s in pain. Another minute that they could be taking him farther and farther away.

After wandering around aimlessly for a while, his mind completely occupied by fear and heartache, Steve finds himself weeping in an empty park at seven in the morning. And that’s when he picks up his Stark phone, and calls Nat.

She was one of the first people he talked to after Nakia and Okoye got him into the new hotel room yesterday, so she knows what’s going on already, and has been working her ass off on her end, trying to find Bucky, too. She picks up after only one ring, and Steve knows her well enough to be able to tell from just her greeting that she didn’t sleep at all either.

“Any news?” she asks tightly.

“No,” Steve answers, his voice breaking on the single syllable with how ashamed he is that it’s true.

Nat huffs a frustrated sigh. “Fuck,” she breathes. “I’m still tracking down my old Red Room contacts, I haven’t managed to reach any yet.”

Natasha and Bucky were the only people who have been held captive by Hydra and actually escaped, Steve knows, but there are people out there who left because their contracts ended, with the understanding that, should Hydra need them in the future, they will answer the call. Some of those people, Nat revealed yesterday when Steve called her, are secretly no longer in Hydra’s pocket, following in the footsteps of Bucky’s father, who tried to work against the organization in secret. A few of these people are old friends of Nat’s, who now work with Hydra only enough to gain whatever information they can on them while not attracting suspicion. Nat has had some minimal contact with these people over the last number of years — a few of them have passed whatever information they found on to her as she’s been gathering evidence against Hydra for the last several years — and when she learned of Bucky’s capture, she immediately started going through her channels to reach them. None of them can be known to be in touch with each other, though, so it takes some time to make contact.

Steve lets out a rattling breath, and covers his eyes with his free hand.

“I can’t have failed him like this.” He hears it uncontrollably shake out of his mouth as he says it. “I can’t live with that, I can’t— _live_ without him, Nat, I _need_ him!”

“I know,” Nat tells him. She sounds as weary as he is. “I know, hon, you haven’t failed him—”

“Yes, I did,” Steve argues. It just comes out, he can’t stop it any more than he can stop the tears squeezing out of his eyes. Any more than he could stop the tides. “I did. He’s gone because I didn’t—”

“Steven Grant Rogers, you listen to me right now,” Nat snaps. And all of a sudden, the fear and weariness is gone from her voice, replaced by a white-hot anger that shuts Steve up instantly.

“You are wallowing in guilt,” she tells him, “and whether or not that is a valid reaction at this moment, it _isn’t helping_ him, so _stop it!_ Now, I know better than you that every second we haven’t gotten to him is another second he’s living a fate that I know for a fact he personally considers worse than _death_ , and right now I don’t _fucking care_ if it’s your fault, or his fault, or my fault, or the fucking _moon’s_ fault, because placing the blame is doing _nothing_.”

Her voice, still firm and angry, finally wobbles just a little when she continues, “Our guy is _out_ there and he _needs_ us. He needs _you_. So pull yourself the _fuck_ together, Rogers, and _do. Something. Useful._ Do you hear me?”

“Christ,” Steve laughs wetly, wiping at his eyes. “You should’a been the army captain, not me.”

“Find him, Rogers,” Nat orders him, her voice thick. “Find him, and get him the fuck out of there.”

She’s right. She’s absolutely right. He tells her as much.

“Rogers,” Nat says as they’re both getting ready to hang up, and Steve hums weakly in response. “You’re useless to him if you don’t sleep.”

Damn it, she’s right about that, too.

“How could you tell?” Steve asks.

“I know you,” is all Nat says in reply. Her voice is softer now, and gentle. That lightning-strike mood shift Steve knows so well. “I love you, Steve. We’ll get him, okay?”

Steve has never really lost faith, not entirely. He wishes he had as much as Nat seems to, and he can’t say he has much left in _himself_ right now. But he’ll be absolutely damned if he ever loses faith in Bucky Barnes.

So he nods. “Okay.”

Steve is on his way back to the hotel room in the pale pre-dawn light, when his phone starts singing “Back in Black.” He fumbles it out of his pocket to answer the video call from Tony.

“Anything?” he gasps out before Tony can even greet him.

“Minimal,” Tony tells him regretfully. “Just some more satellite shots that may or may not be one of the cars that left with him. I already got them to Okoye and Nakia. I’m sorry,” he adds, and he both sounds it and looks it.

Steve frowns. “Why’d you call _me_ , then?” he asks. He is not the useful one in this operation. “If you’ve already talked to _them_ —”

“Nakia said you’re not okay,” Tony cuts him off. “She said you didn’t sleep at all.”

“I couldn’t,” Steve tells him. “I can’t. How could I _possibly_ be okay right now, Tony?”

Tony looks at Steve through the phone screen, and he looks so…patient. And understanding. In a way Steve isn’t sure he’s ever seen from Tony before now.

“You’re not supposed to be okay,” he says softly. “I called to check in, in case you need a shoulder to lean on. Metaphorically, of course.”

And that— Well, that breaks Steve. Suddenly, he’s crying again, sinking down onto a bench at the edge of the park he hasn’t quite managed to leave yet.

“Tony,” he breathes, hardly more than a whisper, "I’m so— I’m so fuckin’ scared, Tone. I’m so _fucking_ scared.”

“I know,” Tony tells him softly. “I know, Cap. But we’ll get him back. We’re gonna find him, we’re gonna bring him back. I won’t stop trying until we do, okay? I promise.”

Steve sniffs, wiping his nose with the sleeve of his coat. “Why are you doing all of this for me, Tony?” he asks, the question tumbling out of him before he can stop it. “Everything, all of this— I couldn’t have left New York with him if it weren’t for you, and now—” He stops. All he can ask is, “Why?”

But Tony’s frowning at him, bemused. “‘Cause you’re my friend,” he says like it’s obvious. Like it’s simple.

Steve shakes his head. “Not so much this past year,” he mumbles.

“Yeah, well,” Tony says dismissively. “Sleeping together wasn’t our _best_ decision.”

“I’ve been neglecting our friendship,” Steve admits, because he has. “I haven’t been calling you, or inviting you out—”

“We’ve both been lapsed, Cap,” Tony interrupts him again. “We’re adults, we’re busy, we dated each other for ten minutes and then broke up pretty spectacularly. It _happens_. I still care about you.”

Steve pauses at that, another wave of guilt washing over him. “Yeah,” he says quietly, “I know.”

Tony sighs, sharp and annoyed. “I didn’t—” he starts, scrubbing a hand over his face. “I didn’t mean like _that_ , but yeah, since it’s out there: I still have some feelings for you.”

He says it so plainly, and he looks so annoyed at Steve, which doesn’t exactly match his words. Steve knows. Has known. It’s one of the reasons he hasn’t reached out to Tony much over the last year.

“It’s not a big deal,” Tony is already continuing, “I’m not in love with you, they’ll go away. You don’t have to feel guilty that you never felt that way about me.”

“I wanted to,” Steve says like a confession. “At first, I thought I did.”

“Until we fucked a hundred times in the span of a week and a half, and you realized it was just physical for you,” Tony agrees. “It was a little more emotional for me, so what? Still wouldn’t’ve worked.”

Steve sniffs again. “I do care a lot about you, Tone,” he says firmly. “That much has always been true.”

Tony gives him a small, lopsided smile. “I know, Steve,” he says. “I’ve never doubted that. And Bucky is amazing, I see what you see in him. And I saw the way he looks at you — like you’re personally responsible for hanging the moon, and every fucking star in the sky. He loves you so fucking much, more than I ever could have. I was genuinely thrilled to see you with him, how happy you both looked, despite the circumstances. I’m not gonna let this go until you have him back,” he says, and the conviction in his voice bolsters Steve more than Tony might ever know. “He doesn’t deserve this, and neither do you. I care about you, and you care about him, so I care about him.”

Steve nods. “Thanks, Tone,” he says, hoping Tony knows how much he means it. He doesn’t have words for anything else.

When Steve gets back to the hotel, he feels a little stronger. Between Nat’s wake up call, and Tony’s confident conviction, there’s more clarity in his mind since there has been since he woke up yesterday to find Bucky gone. He’s ready to help. He’s ready to _find_ Bucky, whatever it takes.

Nakia is glaring at one of the computers when Okoye lets Steve back in. She tilts it toward him when he comes around to see what she’s doing.

“Stark sent more images,” she tells him. “We are analyzing them to see if the vehicle is a match to one of the ones that took Bucky away.”

“Any luck?” Steve asks, doing a better job of keeping his voice level now, at the very least.

“Not yet,” Okoye supplies while Nakia shakes her head, eyes still locked on the screen of data. “We may be getting closer to identifying one of his attackers, though.”

And that’s when the realization that he should have had _instantly_ shoots through Steve like ice. God, he’s so fucking _stupid_ , how did he not think of it—?

“Most of them had masks covering their faces,” Okoye is continuing, not seeing Steve’s stricken expression, “but one pulled his off when he crouched down in front of Bucky, and spoke to him. We think he may be—”

“Brock Rumlow?” Steve asks. That part shouldn’t have been a surprise.

Okoye and Nakia both look up at him quickly before Nakia returns to her screen.

“Yes,” Okoye says. “You are not surprised.”

“No,” Steve agrees. “But we won’t find him. He’s too good. We might find one of the others, though.”

Okoye raises an eyebrow at him.

“Jack Rollins is a friend of Rumlow’s, and a coworker at the police station,” Steve explains. “I got intel that he’s in Toronto, from an ex-CIA pal of mine who spotted him the other day.” Steve sets his jaw and clenches his fists. He should have remembered this _yesterday_. At least he’s remembering now. “We find Rollins, he’ll lead us to Rumlow. And Rumlow has Bucky. That, I know for _damn_ sure.”

They search for Rollins for hours, taking shifts so each of them can get a few hours’ sleep. Okoye orders Steve to sleep once it’s dark, and mildly threatens him if he doesn’t. Nakia gives him a sachet of tea that’s supposed to help him fall asleep, and it does, technically, but Steve still only manages to doze for about three hours total. He waits out the rest of his sleep shift by unpacking, and then repacking, the backpack Okoye and Nakia provided him. Most of his and Bucky’s belongings are already on plane the two warriors flew here from Wakanda, ready to escape the moment they have Bucky back again, so this backpack is the bag Steve will be living out of until then, as well as the one he’ll carry into the fight when they rescue Bucky.

As such, he’s only got a few t-shirts and his own toothbrush as far as personal belongings inside. Also packed are two pistols, provided by Okoye — which he disassembles and then reassembles a few times to maintain a feel for them — a few smoke grenades, and plenty of ammo. The rest of the contents are things for Bucky. A pair of soft sweatpants, and one of Steve’s own worn, oversized t-shirts that Bucky likes to sleep in. A few bottles of water. Extra contact lenses, and saline solution. Bucky’s glasses.

Steve takes the glasses out of their case, and cradles them gently in his palms.

“I’m coming, honey,” he whispers to them, like Bucky might hear him through them. “I’m on my way, I promise. I’ll find you.”

A fat tear drops onto one of the lenses, and Steve sniffs and wipes it away with the hem of his shirt. He puts the glasses back in their case, and tucks the case back into the backpack.

And then Steve’s phone dings with an incoming message.

He grabs the phone off the bed, where it’s been lying face-down, and sees a notification from Nakia. Holding his breath, Steve quickly thumbs the phone open to a simple message of two long decimal numbers.

Coordinates.

She found Rollins.

One of the things Steve hated most when he was SOF, and when he was a police officer, were the stakeouts. He hated tailing people. Hated waiting for something to happen, not able to do _anything_ until it did.

This is a million times worse.

While Steve and Okoye follow him around, and Nakia waits with the plane, Rollins seems in absolutely no hurry to get back to his Hydra buddies, and the work he’s presumably meant to be doing in torturing Bucky.

Steve’s hands itch as he watches Jack Rollins going about his fucking day like he’s just running some goddamn errands. He wants to wrap his hands around that throat and squeeze until the life leaves Rollins’ eyes. He wants to fucking murder this guy.

It’s a frightening urge — one that Steve has never before felt like this, not with this kind of intentionality to it. But Rollins is involved in actively hurting Bucky, and Steve doesn’t want to let him live.

He refrains, if only because he tells himself over and over and over again that they _need_ Rollins to lead them to Bucky. And Rollins needs to be alive for that. After that—

Well. After that, they’ll see.

It takes _hours_. Long enough that Steve’s faith starts to falter again. What if Rollins really _is_ just here because of coincidence? What if he’s not Hydra at all?

But no. Rollins is here, and Bucky was taken. That’s not coincidence. That’s intent.

It’s creeping toward twilight, in the late afternoon of winter in Canada, when something _finally_ happens. Rollins gets a phone call, then immediately gets in his car. Steve and Okoye are right behind him.

He takes a lot of turns, and doubles back on himself, like he knows he could be followed. But he’s not in a hurry. There’s no urgency to it. And Steve has always been good at this part — the invisible pursuit. Rollins doesn’t seem to know that he really is being followed, because his attempts to shake a tail are lazy. Perfunctory. Steve blows through them all.

Finally, Rollins’ black sedan leads them out, away from the city, into a sparse, open area, and comes to a stop outside an old, seemingly abandoned military bunker.

Far enough away that Rollins doesn’t see, parked behind a copse of trees, Steve and Okoye watch him get out of his car, and walk up to the door. He knocks, and the door opens. He disappears inside.

Steve looks at Okoye, who says quietly over the comm, “He’s in.”

“In position,” Nakia responds, while Steve and Okoye ready their weapons.

It’s a bunker, so there are no windows looking out at them. Still, Steve and Okoye do their best to stay hidden. Steve hasn’t spotted any, but there could be hidden security cameras out here. Or someone could be watching, and report back to the others inside. Or shoot them where they stand.

No one does.

Nakia is there when they reach the door, completely hidden one moment, and then suddenly at their side. Though it startles Steve a little, Okoye takes this in stride, like it happens all the time. Once they’re all there, in position, Okoye gives the signal, and Steve and Nakia brace for impact as she knocks.

The door, solid, and thick enough not to allow for communication through its bulk, opens a crack. Okoye points her gun in the face that appears, and shoots.

The sound is like a starter pistol that kicks off a race, and Steve, who has been feeling constrained and held back for _days_ , is let loose.

He bursts through the door, kicking it open, and shoving his way past the body of the man Okoye just killed. There are two others running toward him — one of them, Steve recognizes from the police station, but he can’t remember the asshole’s name. It doesn’t make him hesitate to shoot the guy square in the forehead. The other one drops, too, from a bullet shot by one of the women just behind Steve.

At the end of the hallway, they come to a huge, open room, populated by dusty, outdated computers on desks, and stacks of yellowed papers. That’s not what Steve’s focused on.

Because right there, in a smaller, three-walled room across the main room, is Bucky.

He’s hanging by his wrists from the ceiling. Naked, thin, beaten and bruised, and clearly out of it, but still fighting as hard as he can against Rollins, who’s fumbling to get him unlocked from the chains they’ve had him dangling from.

Steve doesn’t even stop to think before he pulls the trigger, and Rollins drops, kneecap shattered. Steve shoots again, and this bullet slices through Rollins’ brain.

Trusting Okoye and Nakia to sweep the rest of the bunker for other Hydra agents, Steve sprints. And at last he’s there, next to Bucky, touching him gently and nearly weeping at the feel of Bucky’s skin against his hands, after three days of thinking he may never touch him again. As Steve loops one arm around Bucky’s waist to hold him up, and reaches up with the other to the key Rollins left, to _get Bucky down from there, Jesus fuck_ , Bucky’s eyes open and focus on Steve’s face, red and bloodshot and blank.

It’s as his arms drop from the manacles that have bound his wrists that Bucky seems to recognize Steve. And he _smiles_.

“Steve,” he breathes like a sigh of relief, his voice deep and rasping, as Steve sinks to his knees with Bucky in his arms, bringing them both to the floor. “You found me.”

Steve cradles Bucky’s gaunt, pale, bruised face in one hand, the other still tight around Bucky’s waist, holding his cold skin against whatever warmth Steve can give him. Bucky’s arms are limp and lifeless, but he’s gazing up at Steve like he’s the only thing in the whole world Bucky cares about. Steve brushes his thumb across his sharp cheekbone.

“Of course I did, honey,” he replies vehemently, his own voice rough and thick with emotion. He presses his nose into Bucky’s cheek, breathing in the sharp scent of his sweat and body odor, proof that he’s alive, that he’s here. “Of _course_ I did.”

Nakia appears beside them, dropping to her knees and shrugging out of her long trench coat. Steve helps her put it on Bucky, drawing his sore, aching arms through the sleeves, and buttoning it over his nakedness, tying the belt around his waist. Steve takes off his own coat, too, and puts it on Bucky over top of Nakia’s. Bucky is starting to shiver, which Steve hopes is a good sign. He hopes it means he’s getting warm enough to feel cold again.

“Rub his arm and shoulder, and the seam of his prosthesis,” Nakia instructs Steve, unzipping his backpack and rifling inside it. “Get his blood moving. He’s going to need his arms.”

Bucky hisses as Steve administers to his arms. They’ve probably been numb for a while, and as Steve stimulates his blood flow, he’s most likely feeling some pretty intensely painful pins and needles all over. Steve winces, but keeps going. It’s a necessary pain, and Bucky will be able to use his arms at least a little bit when it’s over.

While Steve attends to Bucky’s circulation, Nakia opens one of the water bottles from Steve’s backpack, and gently pours a little at a time into Bucky’s mouth. He swallows roughly and gasps.

“Fuck,” he swears under his breath between sips.

“Did they give you any water at all?” Nakia asks.

Bucky shakes his head. “An IV once, I think,” he tells her. “I’m not sure.”

“Then that is enough for now,” Nakia says, recapping the bottle.

“Wait—” Bucky says, shaking out his shoulders a little, and managing to cup his hands in front of him. Nakia pours a small amount of water into his hands, and he immediately brings them to his face, splashing the water directly into his eyes, and then digging out his contacts. He drops them — two folded, clouded dishes on the dirty concrete.

“Sorry,” Bucky mumbles, and he sounds genuinely remorseful, like there’s _anything_ for him to feel bad about right now. “I know I’m useless now because I can’t see, but they just… _hurt_ —”

He stops short, because Steve has already reached into the side pocket of his backpack and pulled out Bucky’s glasses, and he’s gently sliding them onto Bucky’s face. Bucky blinks at him from behind the lenses.

“Better?” Steve asks.

Bucky wets his lips and nods. He tilts forward a little, and Steve wants so badly to kiss him, to press their lips together and breathe life back into his dazed and weak form—but he can’t. They have to get out of here. So instead, Steve tilts his head, and presses a soft kiss to Bucky’s sharply stubbled cheek as Okoye returns with Bucky’s own coat, and she and Nakia get that on him, too.

“Are you ready?” Okoye asks Bucky directly. He swallows and nods, holding out his hand.

Nakia hands him one of her guns, which he shakily turns over, opening the chamber to check it’s loaded and ready, and then wraps his fingers around the grip.

“Is this really a good idea?” Steve asks warily as he watches this. “Giving him a gun? He can barely _stand_.”

Bucky snorts like Steve just said something funny, and Okoye and Nakia exchange an amused look. Steve frowns, and watches for the first time as a grin spreads, slow and catlike, across Okoye’s face.

“You haven’t seen him shoot yet, have you, Captain?” she asks.

Steve raises an eyebrow, but there’s no time to ask, because suddenly a door down at the other end of the bunker bangs open, and a clamor of shouts and pounding footsteps bounces around the concrete walls.

Time to go.

Steve hoists Bucky up into his arms like a baby, or a bride, and Nakia scoops Steve’s abandoned gun up off the floor. This is the plan. Steve’s job is to get Bucky out, and Nakia and Okoye will take out anyone who tries to get in their way. Steve’s spare pistol is tucked, safety firmly on, into the waistband at the back of his jeans, just in case, but he’s here to rescue his guy. _That_ is his main focus.

Okoye darts out from their alcove first, ducking behind a desk, turning to the right where the attack is coming from, and begins to take Hydra agents down without prejudice. Nakia is right behind her, running further out before dropping behind another desk and firing around it, giving Steve just enough cover to race at his considerable full speed across the cavernous main room.

Bucky has a gun to take out stragglers, Steve figures. To shoot anyone ahead of them, or anyone who somehow gets past Nakia and Okoye. What Steve doesn’t expect is for Bucky to immediately twist in his arms, with a strength he certainly doesn’t have right now, and take a shot at a high angle, immediately followed by another.

Steve glances sideways to watch two Hydra snipers fall from the exposed support rafters. Two shots, two hidden agents. Bucky is _good_.

In fact, it’s like he has a sixth sense for it, because suddenly Bucky is turning again, firing before Steve can see him even aim, and another hidden assailant, this one just out of sight behind a desk, falls with a dull _thud_.

Bucky isn’t just good, he’s _excellent_. It’s like he can feel, rather than just see, where his enemy is. His aim is impeccable. Every shot he fires hits its mark, and he never once takes more than one shot to kill.

Steve knows that Bucky is this good because Hydra forced him to be. He knows that Bucky never asked for this skill, never wanted it. His heart aches at that truth, but— Watching Bucky take out agent after agent before Steve even sees them is… _really_ hot.

Steve has to put Bucky on his feet to open the heavy door, supporting him with just one arm around his waist, and Bucky turns back to aim over Steve’s shoulder. Fires again right before Steve pulls him outside.

It feels like they’ve done it. They still have to make it to the plane, but Steve can hear Nakia and Okoye following just behind them, and they’re _out_. Bucky is still turned backwards against Steve’s arm, stabilizing himself enough to try to push himself around again so Steve can scoop him back up and run for the plane, when it happens.

Something hits Bucky. Hard. And he’s knocked off his feet and onto the ground. Steve stumbles, but spins around, yanking his firearm out of his jeans and throwing the safety off as he wildly aims above and behind him, but Bucky is faster. The sniper slumps, dead, before Steve has even gotten him in his crosshairs.

Okoye and Nakia burst out of the bunker. Nakia slams the doors shut, and Okoye takes a small device out of her pocket and attaches it to the door to force it locked on anyone still inside.

And then, Bucky screams.

It’s guttural, and terrified. Steve jerks around to him, dropping down beside him before he can even take stock of what he’s seeing.

Bucky’s left arm is _gone_.

Like it’s been blasted off, disintegrated, just marred metal and wires a few inches from his shoulder, sticking out from three layers of burned coat sleeves. It almost looks—

—just like it did the day Steve dug him out of that rubble, before he knew him at all.

Steve gasps at the memory, returning to him like being doused with cold water. He’s running through the smoke and ash, digging frantically through burning hot rubble to the man underneath, bloodied and burned and not breathing at all, his arm a gory mess.

But Bucky is breathing. Bucky is awake. And he’s staring down, eyes wide and wild, at the stump of his prosthetic, gasping in air way too quickly.

He’s panicking.

“Hey, shh, shh,” Steve hears himself say softly, reaching out and taking Bucky’s face between his hands, turning him to look at Steve instead of his broken prosthetic as he hyperventilates. “You’re okay, Bucky. You’re okay, you’re fine. I’ve got you, okay? Breathe, honey.”

“Pick him up, we don’t have time!” Okoye commands, reminding Steve a lot of Natasha in this moment, and he knows she’s right. He wishes he could guide Bucky through this, help him breathe, help him feel calm, but they don’t have time yet.

So he scoops his arms around Bucky’s back, and under his knees, and hoists him back up as he stands, following Okoye and Nakia at a full sprint into the tree line, to the insect-like, Reuleaux triangle-shaped plane waiting just beyond it, glinting in the blood-red sunset.

Once they’re inside the aircraft, Steve drops to the floor with Bucky, keeping one arm around his back to hold him up, and pressing his other palm to Bucky’s face to lean their foreheads together.

“Breathe with me, baby,” he murmurs, and intentionally takes an exaggeratedly deep breath. In. Out. Bucky tries to follow suit, but he’s hyperventilating too hard, so Steve takes one of Bucky’s hands, and presses it to his own chest. “Come on, honey, you can do this. Breathe with me, come on.”

The door finishes closing behind him as Steve takes another exaggerated breath that Bucky can feel. Okoye is in the pilot’s seat. As Bucky works hard at bringing his breathing down to a steady, deep pace, Okoye lifts the aircraft off the ground and into the air.

Steve feels a hand on his shoulder, and looks up to Nakia.

“The washroom is there,” she tells him softly, pointing to an inset door over Steve’s left shoulder, while Bucky nuzzles his face into Steve’s chest, his breathing now ragged, but even. And then she puts Steve’s backpack down beside him, and walks away.

Steve takes the hint. “Think you can stand up with me, honey?” he asks softly.

Bucky nods against his chest, so Steve stands, pulling Bucky up with him, then supports his weight as they go into the small washroom together.

Though small, it’s actually quite spacious for an airplane bathroom. There’s even a tiny shower in the corner. But it’s way too small for both Bucky _and_ Steve, and Bucky still can’t stand on his own, so Steve just sets him down on the lid of the toilet seat, and starts searching for a washcloth and towels.

“Steve,” Bucky says quietly, and Steve turns from the cabinet he’s just found to look at him.

Bucky is gazing at him with wonder and tears in his eyes. He looks like he wants to say something, but when he opens his mouth again, all he whispers is, “Steve.”

So Steve comes to him, and Bucky reaches out as he comes, his fingers curling against Steve’s neck as he weakly draws him in. But he doesn’t need to at all, because Steve would come to Bucky always, in every universe.

When their lips finally meet, it feels like Steve is breathing again at last, for the first time in three days. Bucky’s mouth trembles against his, but he kisses Steve with as much force as his weary body contains.

Steve is the one to break it, leaning his forehead against Bucky’s instead, to give him space to breathe. “I love you,” he whispers. “Bucky, I love you so much, I can’t stand— I’m so sorry it took me so long to—”

“Thank you,” Bucky breathes, cutting Steve’s apology off cold. “Thank you, thank you, god, _Steve_.”

“Don’t thank me,” Steve tells him, petting down the side of his neck. “I will always come for you, okay? Forever. I’m so _sorry_ it took me so long, baby, I’m sorry.”

“No,” Bucky mumbles, shaking his head, though his forehead doesn’t leave Steve’s. “Stop that. You found me. You came for me, and you found me, and you _saved_ me. No one has ever—”

He cuts himself off this time with a gasping sob. And then he’s crying, and Steve presses in to hug him tightly while he weeps, holding the back of his head, kissing any part of him he can reach.

After Bucky has calmed down and let Steve help him out of his three coats, Steve runs a washcloth under hot water, and soaps it up so he can sponge Bucky down, careful not to aggravate any of his many bruises, washing away three days of sweat salt and funk. He helps Bucky brush his teeth, then he takes the sweats and his oversized shirt out of his backpack, and helps Bucky into them, avoiding the mangled metal of his torn prosthesis.

“Are you cold?” he asks when Bucky is dressed.

“A little,” Bucky admits. “Will you just hold me?”

Steve feels his heart break. “Of course, baby,” he sighs, pressing a kiss into Bucky’s hair, despite that being the main part of Bucky he wasn’t able to wash. “I’ll hold you as long as you want me to.”

There’s an alcove on the right side of the plane, with a bench sofa surrounding a table, kind of like a corner booth, and Steve half-carries Bucky over to it, settling into the corner so Bucky can lie across his lap, inside the circle of his arms. Bucky leans his head down on Steve’s shoulder, and tucks his face against Steve’s neck, rattling a sigh.

Nakia leaves her seat in the cockpit and comes over to them, placing a tub of salve on the table in front of them. She reaches out, and quietly binds the ragged stump of Bucky’s prosthetic with a fabric cap so the jagged edges won’t cut him or anyone else. Then she squeezes his thigh.

“I am glad to see you again, Bucky,” she tells him softly. Bucky’s face is pressed so far into Steve’s neck, Steve can feel him smile.

“You too, Nakia,” he mumbles. “Thank you.”

“How long since the last dose?” she asks him, which confuses Steve for a moment, not understanding what she means.

“Few hours,” Bucky replies, his face still firmly buried in Steve’s neck. “I think. Can’t really tell.”

“Okay,” Nakia says, nodding. “I don’t have buprenorphine here, but we will be home soon. In the meantime, I’ll get you some Tylenol.”

Bucky nods, and Nakia gives his leg another squeeze before walking away, but Steve’s blood has run cold. Just the mention of buprenorphine, and he realizes exactly what she’s referring to.

“They forced heroin on you again,” Steve says quietly in his realization.

Bucky sighs, then nods against Steve’s neck again.

Steve reaches up and scratches Bucky’s scalp through his hair. “Baby,” he says slowly, “will you tell me what else they did?”

Bucky pulls his face away from Steve’s shoulder and sits up. “I will,” he answers, “if you put that salve on me.”

“Oh, fuck, yes of course,” Steve says, reaching for the tub.

Steve dips his fingers in the cold medicine, and Bucky offers up his wrist, swollen and purpled from the manacles.

“They jumped me on my way to the corner store,” Bucky begins as Steve starts gently applying the balm to his wrist. “Injected me with heroin right off, and some other sedative, I don’t know. I lost consciousness right away. I haven’t really been totally lucid since,” he adds softly. “Woke up naked, hanging from the ceiling, and as far as I know, they kept me like that. How long has it been?” he asks, stretching his arm out so Steve can get the injection bruises on the inside of his elbow.

“Three days,” Steve answers, not able to meet Bucky’s eyes as he says it.

But Bucky just nods. “Okay,” he breathes. “That’s good to know. As far as I could tell, it might have been a day, it might have been a week. For me, it was just a series of disconnected moments of semi-lucidity, coming to when they’d inject me with something else, or when—uh.” Bucky stops, and Steve looks up to see him wetting his lips.

Steve wipes his hand on his own pants, then takes Bucky’s glasses off, and places them upside-down on the table. He gets some more of the ointment on his fingers, and rubs it delicately on the bruises sunk into Bucky’s eyes and across his nose. “When…?” he prompts evenly.

“When Crossbo—when Rumlow would come in,” Bucky tells him quietly.

Steve’s hand freezes.

“Did he—?” he starts to ask, stiltedly. “Did he hurt you? I mean— _fuck_.” _Obviously_ , he hurt Bucky, Steve can _see_ that, but—

“No,” Bucky says, understanding what Steve is really asking. “No, he—he touched me. And he threatened to. A lot. But he didn’t—he didn’t fuck me.” Then, in a scared, wobbling whisper, he adds, “I thought he was gonna.”

Fuck, fuck, _fuck._

“You’re safe, now,” Steve breathes, pressing forward and meeting their foreheads again. The smell of the salve is strong, but not at all unpleasant. It’s warm. Comforting. Cinnamon and cloves.

Bucky huffs out another gust of air, his eyes closing as he nods. “I know.”

“I’ll kill him before I let him touch you again,” Steve swears, and he means it. He _means_ it.

Bucky gives him a soft, sad smile, the deep, ever-changing blue of his eyes shining beautifully as he opens them on Steve’s face. “I know,” he repeats.

They stay there a moment, just breathing into each other. Just being here together.

Eventually, Steve picks up the salve again, and dabs some on the faded bruise and pinprick on the side of Bucky’s neck.

“So,” Steve says, clearing his throat, “what happened back there with, um…with your prosthetic?”

Bucky frowns, confused by the question. “You saw the sniper,” he says.

“I did,” Steve agrees, slipping his hand under Bucky’s shirt so he can move on to the swollen seam between Bucky’s skin and the remaining vibranium, “but I don’t understand what could have ripped up vibranium like that. Isn’t vibranium supposed to be indestructible?”

“Just about,” Bucky says ruefully. “I’m not sure what it was, I haven’t seen anything like it before. It looked like a shoulder-mounted rocket launcher, but it was this, like…blast of blue light. Like an energy cannon or something.”

Steve pauses, sweeping his eyes over Bucky to look for more bruises, and Bucky shifts, lifting up his shirt to expose his battered ribcage.

“Did it hurt?” Steve asks as he attends to Bucky’s ribs, way too visible under his skin. He was already too thin from the six weeks they were apart, but the last three days of being starved have reduced him to almost skin and bones.

Bucky is quiet for too long. Steve glances up to see him watching him sadly.

“It’s connected to my brain, Steve,” he says weakly. “Yeah, it hurt.”

Steve stops asking questions. They’ll have time later, when Bucky isn’t in so much pain. When they’ve both had a chance to sleep. When it all isn’t _quite_ so fresh.

He finishes applying the balm to Bucky’s bruises and abrasions, and Nakia comes back with a water bottle, a few Tylenol tablets, and a nutrition bar, which Bucky eats in three bites after downing the pills. All the while, he doesn’t budge from Steve’s lap, and Steve’s arms.

Afterwards, Bucky pulls at Steve, and kisses him, gentle and tender. Steve is careful not to hurt Bucky as he kisses him right back.

Then Steve kisses Bucky’s nose as lightly as he can, just a soft brush of lips, and whispers, “Think you can get some sleep, honey?”

“I’ve been out for three days,” Bucky whines, but then he yawns. “The Royal Talon Fighter is really fast, we’ll be there in just a few hours.”

“Then you can get a few hours’ sleep,” Steve tells him, smiling and hoping it reaches his eyes. “Being sedated and tortured doesn’t count as restful sleep, my love. Just try?”

Bucky considers it. “Will you hold me the whole time?” he asks. There’s a fear in his eyes that makes Steve ache.

Steve knows well how it feels to be too afraid of nightmares to sleep. He presses one more kiss to Bucky’s lips, and then, repeating his promise from before, he murmurs, “As long as you want me to, baby.”

Bucky tucks his face, slightly sticky with salve, back into Steve’s neck again. It only takes a minute or two before he’s snoring. And with Bucky back in his arms, the warm weight of him pressed against Steve’s chest, and his breathing deep and even, for the first time in three days, Steve feels himself naturally drift into sleep, too.

🎈

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **Next time:**   
> 


	17. Seventeen: December 7th

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Phew! Congratulations, we made it through the darkest hour! The next two chapters are a lot of hurt/comfort and sweet things to help us all recover. Thanks so much for coming along with me and trusting me to guide us through this. I know the last two chapters were rough. This story is so personal for me, and my whole heart is written in here, and I'm so grateful for everyone reading this, and walking this journey with Bucky, Steve, and me. ❤️

Bucky doesn’t wake up until they’ve already landed, when Steve shifts him just enough to stand, with Bucky still firmly in his arms. He drifts off again — kissing Steve’s soft, warm neck, and finding comfort in his strong, steady pulse — as Steve carries him out of the plane and into the early-morning darkness. He comes to again for a few minutes in the hospital, answering questions in Xhosa when he’s asked about how he feels, or what he remembers from the past three days. But before the doctors have even left his room, he falls asleep once again, holding onto Steve’s warm hand.

In fact, Bucky sleeps for the entire rest of the day, finally waking up a little before midnight on Monday night.

For the first time here, Bucky takes stock. He’s in a comfortable hospital room, lying on one of those beds that keeps you propped up. He’s attached to two or three different machines via various cables, and there’s a a nasal cannula across his face, and a half-empty IV drip feeding him fluids intravenously. He’s not in a hospital gown. No, he’s still wearing the sweats that Steve brought him. He hasn’t been bathed, which he’s grateful for (the thought of someone touching him while he’s naked and not awake for it right now sends shivers down his spine). There’s a hand holding his.

Steve.

Bucky turns his head, and his eyes find Steve, sitting right next to him, awake, but not looking at him. He hasn’t noticed that Bucky’s awake yet. He’s staring down at his own lap, and he looks so, so weary.

So old.

Bucky squeezes his hand. Steve’s eyes snap up to him.

“Bucky,” he breathes, leaning forward at once, and bringing Bucky’s hand to his mouth to gently kiss his knuckles. “How are you feeling?”

“I love you,” Bucky tells him, because that’s how he’s feeling. His voice comes out hoarse and rasping, but Steve’s weary face lights up in a soft smile. “You been sitting there all day?” Bucky asks him.

Steve looks a little bit guilty, and admits, “Couldn’t leave you.”

And Bucky understands. He’s glad that Steve didn’t leave, even though he’s been asleep. It’s a deep comfort to know that Steve really is here to protect him, no matter what. That he really can count on Steve to keep him safe.

“I love you,” Bucky says again. May not stop saying it every other sentence for a long time yet.

Steve kisses the back of his hand again. “Love you with my whole heart, pal,” he whispers into Bucky’s skin, where it can settle and stay, where it can light Bucky from within for the rest of his life.

They sit there like that, just gazing at each other, just holding hands, for some small time. And then Bucky wets his lips.

“Have you slept?” he asks.

Steve shakes his head. “Not since the plane. I texted Nat and Tony when we first got here to tell them you’re safe, because I forgot to in all of the—you know. And then, well—” He wets his lips, the pink of his tongue darting over dry, chapped lips. “Nakia says there’s a part of the hospital with rooms for family members, and patients who don’t need constant monitoring, and that there’s a room for me there, but I haven’t even gone to see it.” He sniffs, and then repeats, “I couldn’t leave you. Not for a second.”

Bucky nods. “Yeah,” he agrees. “I know. You gotta sleep, though, sweetheart.”

“I know,” Steve says, but it sounds like he’s brushing it off. “I tried, but the chair’s not very comfortable.”

“Then come squeeze in here with me,” Bucky tells him, already scooting over to the right side of the bed so that both of their not-small bodies can try to fit on this little bed meant for one person.

Steve huffs a little laugh. “Honey,” he says, “you’re hooked up to some important shit. I shouldn’t risk rolling onto one of your cables, and making the medical staff think your heart’s stopped or something.”

“We’ll be careful,” Bucky replies firmly, not willing to take no for an answer with this. “Come on.”

Steve hesitates, still, so Bucky deliberately gives him a doleful look.

“Please, Stevie,” he requests softly. And predictably, Steve has no defense to that.

He stands up out of his chair, circles the bed, and then and carefully climbs into it with Bucky, ducking under the cables and tubes he’s attached to. They both shift onto their sides and fold in together, until Bucky’s head is resting on the pillow of Steve’s bicep, arm looped over his tiny waist — careful not to jostle the IV embedded under his elbow — and nose nuzzling into his chest. Steve sets his right hand firmly between Bucky’s shoulder blades, his left running soothingly up and down Bucky’s arm, shoulder to elbow. He presses soft, tender kisses to Bucky’s forehead, and hums.

And Bucky has been asleep, on and off, for nearly twenty-three hours at this point, and barely conscious for three days before that, but here, in Steve’s arms, listening to the steadiness of his breath and the rhythm of his heartbeat, Bucky falls right back into dreamless, restful slumber.

On Tuesday morning, Bucky wakes up — with Steve still holding him — when a nurse comes to check his vitals. She wishes him a good morning in Xhosa, quietly, so as not to wake the sleeping giant in bed with him, and doesn’t scold Bucky for letting his boyfriend climb into his hospital bed, the way Bucky kind of expects her to.

When she’s gone again, telling him she’ll have someone bring him breakfast, Bucky rests his forehead against Steve’s heart, and thinks.

Hydra got to him on Thursday night, and Steve said he was there for three days. Today is Tuesday, which makes it the eighth of December—

Bucky gasps, and isn’t able to stop the “ _Fuck!_ ” from hissing out through his teeth. Which, of course, means he startles Steve awake, too.

“What?!” Steve asks wildly, just barely stopping himself from leaping out of bed and into a fighting stance, knocking Bucky off of all of his machines as he goes. “Baby, what’s wrong?”

“Sorry, sorry!” Bucky is already whispering comfortingly to him, like Steve is a startled horse. “It’s okay, I just realized— It’s the eighth,” he finishes in the worst excuse for an explanation ever.

Steve frowns, obviously still very confused, so he tries again.

“I missed it.” Nope, still not an explanation. “RJ’s birthday,” Bucky finally gets out. “It was the fifth, and I wasn’t there, and I didn’t even call—”

“You were kidnapped and unconscious,” Steve tells him firmly, coming to Bucky’s defense, even against Bucky himself.

“I know,” Bucky says, “but he doesn’t know that. Does he?” he asks, realizing that he actually doesn’t know if Steve contacted RJ or not while he was being held prisoner.

“No,” Steve says, “he doesn’t.”

Bucky nods, and _this_ , of all things, is what’s making tears sprout in his eyes. “So he just thinks I forgot,” he mumbles, burying his face back in Steve’s warm chest, and sniffs. “He thinks I left him, and then forgot his birthday.”

“He doesn’t think that,” Steve breathes, pressing his lips into Bucky’s hair and rubbing his back. “He knows you’ve been staying safe, he knows you can only call him every few days. You’ll tell him…whatever you _want_ to tell him. The truth, or some version of it, or something completely made up if you’d rather, and he’ll understand. He loves you.”

Bucky sniffs again as hot tears spill onto his cheeks, and then into Steve’s soft t-shirt. “I miss him,” he whispers, and Steve says, “I know,” and kisses Bucky’s hair again.

Steve leaves Bucky’s side for the first time since he pulled him out of that bunker so that Bucky can call RJ before he goes to sleep. It’s still before midnight on Monday in New York, so there’s a chance RJ may still be awake.

He picks up on the second ring.

“Is that you?” RJ asks the moment he answers.

“Yeah, kid,” Bucky answers, “it’s me.”

“Are you okay?”

He sounds scared, like he’s been worried, and it pulls Bucky apart.

“I’m okay,” Bucky tells him. “I’m somewhere safe.”

“You haven’t called in days,” RJ says. He doesn’t ask why, but Bucky knows him, knows he wants to.

Bucky wets his lips. He wasn’t really planning on telling him the truth. Not yet, anyway. “I’m sorry,” he says. “I missed your birthday.”

“Yeah,” RJ responds softly. He’s trying to hide it, but Bucky can hear the hurt in his voice anyway. “Are you—? Were you—?”

He stops, and doesn’t finish.

Bucky sighs. “You want the truth?” he asks.

“Yes,” RJ answers immediately, and it sounds like relief.

“Okay,” Bucky says. “Okay, I’ll tell you. Just remember I’m safe now, okay? I’m safe, and I’m all right.”

“Bucky, please,” RJ breathes. “I’ve been _really_ worried, please just tell me what’s going on.”

Bucky takes a deep breath, and begins.

Steve steps out to let Bucky call RJ, and ends up finally going to find the room they’ve prepared for him. Bucky promised to text him when he’s done, so Steve just has to wait for that.

He’s antsy. He doesn’t like that he can’t _see_ Bucky right now. Can’t glance over at him and reassure himself that Bucky is there. That Bucky is _safe_. Steve knows, in his head, that Bucky _is_ safe, and that it’ll take a lot more than Steve just leaving the room for a minute to reverse that reality again. But still, his hands shake as he sits down at the edge of the neatly-made bed and drops his head into them.

This was too much. Almost losing Bucky for good was— It was _too much_. Steve can’t let that happen again, he can’t. Anything he needs to do to protect Bucky, he will. Nothing else in his life matters anymore, not compared to this.

_And how long are you going to be able to keep this up?_ a voice in his head whispers traitorously.

_As long as I need to_ , Steve responds to the voice with unrelenting conviction. He will do anything. Everything. Whatever it fucking takes.

If that’s all he’s good for in this life, he can do that.

Steve’s phone buzzes in his pocket, where he tucked it before leaving Bucky’s room. He pulls it out and glances at the screen.

**[Tony (7:49am)]** How’s the patient?

A small, involuntary smile tugs at Steve’s lips. He knows exactly what Tony’s doing: asking a question about Bucky’s wellbeing to try to get an idea of Steve’s.

Steve is about to respond, but before he’s even started typing, he thinks better of it, and just video calls Tony instead.

Tony’s face appears on screen, sporting a small, teasing smile.

“I’m gonna take it Buckaroo’s doing okay,” he says, “since you’re calling me, and not weeping.”

Steve’s smile spreads across his face. “He’s okay,” he confirms. “He mostly just slept for something like thirty-six hours. They’ve had him on IVs, and every time he wakes up for a few minutes, they give him a little bit of bland food.”

“How’s he liking that?” Tony asks, laughing a little, and turning to whatever he’s currently working on as they talk.

“He doesn’t love it,” Steve admits, “but he hasn’t complained.”

“How do you know he doesn’t like it, then?”

“Because I know him, Tony,” Steve replies, and catches the soft look Tony gives him before arranging his face into something less open. “He tries not to make a face when he eats, but the corners of his eyes tighten, and his nostrils flare a little.”

“Wow,” Tony teases, “you’re, like, _obsessed_ with him.”

“Completely,” Steve agrees.

Tony chuckles. “Where is he?” he asks. “Surprised you’re not with him now.”

“He’s making a call,” Steve answers. “Thanks again for getting me that phone for him, by the way. He hasn’t been awake much, but I think it helps him feel like things are a little more normal, having it.”

Tony shrugs. “No problem, Cap,” he says. “What’s the point of having billions of dollars if you can’t spend a few hundred to messenger a phone you invented to Canada from New York when your buddy needs it?”

Steve rolls his eyes. “I’m trying to thank you, Tony.”

Tony grins as he continues tinkering. “Sure thing,” he says. “And how are you?”

Steve takes a breath, and wets his lips. “I’m fine,” he lies, but Tony immediately gives him a look that very clearly says, ‘ _Yeah, nice try._ ’

“Okay,” Steve relents before Tony can call him out verbally, too, “I’m still kind of a mess. I left his room so he can make a call, and I just feel so anxious that I’m gonna go back, and he won’t be there.”

Tony nods at the contraption he’s tinkering with. “Makes sense,” he says. “You just went through trauma, I’m not surprised you’re still feeling it.”

Steve frowns. “ _I_ didn’t just go through trauma,” he argues. “Not like _he_ did, anyway. And he’s okay. He seems okay.”

Tony puts down the contraption, and turns his attention fully to Steve, the expression on his face very similar to a patient parent trying to explain something to their somewhat dense child.

“You _did_ go through trauma,” Tony tells him. “You lost someone very important to you, and you didn’t know if you were gonna get him back. And that lasted for a few _days_. Just because yours didn’t look like his, doesn’t mean you didn’t experience trauma.”

Okay, maybe he has a point. But Steve still frowns at him through the screen.

“Also,” Tony continues, apparently not finished, “neither of you have exactly gone into details about it with me, but Bucky was kidnapped by these same guys when he was younger, and kept captive for seven years, so I doubt he went through anything in those three days he hasn’t been through before with them. Not saying that makes it _better_ ,” he adds quickly, holding up a hand to stop the protest Steve has already opened his mouth to make, “I’m only saying that means he’s dealt with it before. He seemed pretty fucking together when I met him, and I know appearances can be deceiving with this stuff, but I’d bet a hefty chunk of change he’s had a not-insignificant amount of therapy for exactly the things that were just brought up again. Still traumatic, he’s just used to it. Makes a difference.”

Steve knows that Tony is speaking from experience here. Not an experience anything like Bucky’s, granted, but Tony’s been through his own personal brand of shit. And at some point years ago, he broke down and finally accepted that his reliance on inebriation wasn’t actually fixing anything, and was, in fact, probably going to kill him. That’s when he finally started going to therapy. Now he’s been sober for more than five years, and while Steve knows it’s still a struggle, Tony’s worked very hard to confront his demons in therapy sessions instead of at the bottom of a bottle. He knows what he’s talking about.

“Yeah,” Steve mutters, “I guess.”

Tony shrugs, and goes back to his work. Probably so that he doesn’t have to look at Steve when he says, “You’re allowed to feel shit, Cap. Pain isn’t a competition. Just because he’s experienced pain, doesn’t mean yours is any less valid.”

Steve sighs, and doesn’t respond. Tony knows that means Steve agrees with him, so he glances back at him again.

“Ask to talk to somebody,” he says gently. “You don’t need to tough through this yourself. God knows if you bottle it up, it’ll only end up spilling out all over him eventually.”

“Okay,” Steve whispers, as all the tension he’s been holding — trying to keep his own pain inside, to tough it out and not complain — sluices off of him like water. Then, a little bit louder, he adds, “Thanks, Tony.”

Tony hums and nods, giving no other acknowledgement of how much he truly just helped.

They’re both quiet for a few seconds, Steve just watching as Tony picks up a screwdriver and works at opening a panel on his contraption. He looks tired, Steve realizes, his movements more sluggish than his usual hyperactive tinkering. The clarity of the Stark phone video call gives away the dark circles under his eyes.

“Hey, Tone?” Steve asks, and Tony hums again for Steve to go on. “It’s after midnight.” Another hum, noncommittal but acknowledging. “Why are you still working?”

“I’m always up this late, Cap,” Tony answers, “you know that.”

“Yeah,” Steve agrees, “but you look beat.”

Tony snorts. “Thanks,” he says blandly.

“You know what I mean,” Steve tells him. “You should stop working. Go to bed early for once.”

Tony sighs, but doesn’t respond or stop.

“Tony,” Steve says, low. “What’s going on?”

Finally, Tony sets down his tools, and runs a hand through his hair.

“I don’t know,” he confesses, his eyes still averted from Steve’s. “‘S been even harder to fall asleep lately.” He shrugs, like the movement will shake it off. “Maybe I’m just lonely.”

“You work too much,” Steve tells him. He always has.

“Yeah, well,” Tony says, “I do that. Distracts from the loneliness.”

“And keeps you from meeting someone new,” Steve points out.

Tony finally looks up to cut him a dry glare. “It’s not because of _you_ ,” he says.

“I know,” Steve responds easily. “But you _did_ tell me the other day that you still have feelings for me. _And_ ,” Steve continues, raising his voice over Tony’s indignant sputtering, “you and I have talked more over the past three weeks than we have for almost a year before this, and every conversation we have has something to do with Bucky, so you get to hear all about how ‘obsessed’ with him I am, and how much he means to me.” Steve pauses for a moment, careful about how to go on. “I just wouldn’t be very surprised if all of that combined was bringing up some not-great feelings.”

Tony is still glaring at him, but there’s no heat behind it. It’s guarded, not angry.

“You are _so_ fucking full of yourself,” Tony says eventually, rolling his eyes. It’s not a denial, Steve notes.

So he grins, cheeky. “You already knew that.”

Tony huffs a laugh, his guardedness slipping a little, which Steve is thankful for. Tony is his friend, and Steve cares about his wellbeing. Staying up late, and trying to avoid his negative feelings has never been good for Tony’s mental health, or his sobriety.

“Have you gone out with anyone lately?” Steve asks him.

“Nope,” Tony replies, popping the ‘p,’ and turning back to his work. “I know this sounds very ‘poor little rich boy’ of me, but it’s actually pretty hard to find people who aren’t looking to profit off of me.”

Steve narrows his eyes, trying to decide if he should go where he’s thinking of going or not. But ultimately, Steve is, by nature, a risk-taker, so he starts to ask, “What about—?”

“Don’t,” Tony cuts him off sharply, and it’s Steve’s turn to glare at _him_.

“Tony.”

“She works for me, Cap,” Tony tells him firmly, knowing _exactly_ who Steve was going to ask about. “It’s sexual harassment, and violates about eighteen other codes of ethics to boot.”

“You have a million lawyers, and an entire HR department who are there specifically to make sure your employees are safe and comfortable at work,” Steve points out. “Working out a situation like this is part of their _job description_.”

“But I can’t even ask her if she’s _interested_ ,” Tony cries, “without risking her feeling unsafe or uncomfortable at work!” And okay, he has a fair point. “It would be different if _she_ were interested in _me_ , but she works for me _directly_ , and I’m the CEO. It can’t happen, Steve, so stop asking.”

“Okay,” Steve relents. “I’m sorry. I just want you to be happy, and you’ve liked her for a hell of a long time.”

Tony snorts again, mirthlessly this time. It’s true. In fact, Steve is pretty sure that Tony’s feelings for _him_ have _always_ been tied up in his feelings for Pepper, Tony’s former personal assistant, now chief operating officer. Tony’s been pining for Pepper pretty much since he met her, years ago. And Steve would never speak over Tony about his own feelings, but he does suspect that he was never really as important to Tony romantically as even Tony thinks he was.

Steve thinks that what really happened was Tony, sick of pining over someone he absolutely could not have, just kind of transferred his feelings over to Steve, with whom he had sexual chemistry, and who was paying attention to him at the time, and unknowingly made Steve a sort of proxy for his feelings for Pepper. Sure, Tony’s feelings for Steve are no doubt very real, but Steve would hazard to bet they’re not nearly as strong or hard to get over as Tony’s feelings for _Pepper_.

Steve changes the subject then, turning the conversation to asking what Tony’s working on. And even though both of them absolutely know what he’s doing, Tony seems grateful for the subject change, and starts prattling about his latest invention in words that Steve can only half follow. But Steve makes all the appropriately interested noises, and by the end, Tony’s expression is considerably happier, and he even promises (hollow as Steve knows it to be) to stop working soon and go to bed, before they both say goodbye.

Thankfully, just as Steve is hanging up, a text comes through from Bucky’s new phone that he’s done talking to RJ, and Steve jumps up to head back downstairs and return to him.

Bucky is finishing another small serving of plain rice in the early afternoon, with Steve lying in contented silence on the bed next to him, rubbing a large, warm hand absently up and down Bucky’s back as he reads from a battered English-language paperback one of the nurses found for him, when someone knocks on the door jamb.

He’s expecting it to be someone from his care team, but when Bucky looks up, he sees a tentative smile spread across a face he’s known for his entire life.

“T’Challa?”

Bucky hears the rustling of Steve dropping his paperback on his own chest behind him, but his eyes are glued to the man he grew up with, who may as well have been his brother.

A man who Bucky hasn’t seen in almost six years.

“Hello, Bucky,” T’Challa says, “may I come in?”

“Of course,” Bucky says, and as T’Challa enters, he slips out of bed, despite the weak soreness still rife throughout his body, careful not to dislodge any of the tubes or cables he’s connected to. But to be honest, he doesn’t really care about any of it. He’s seeing his brother for the first time in years, he’s going to hug him.

Bucky is down a prosthesis, and his grip is still weak, but T’Challa makes up for it, and squeezes him tightly.

“It’s good to see you, Bucky,” T’Challa says in his ear. “I’m glad you’re all right.”

“It’s good to see you, too,” Bucky mutters. His throat suddenly feels tight. “I’ve missed you.”

“Me, too.”

“What are you doing here?” Bucky asks as T’Challa starts gently guiding him back to bed.

T’Challa laughs at the question. “I’m here to see you,” he says, like Bucky is missing something obvious. Which, okay, fair enough.

Then T’Challa looks past Bucky, and extends his hand. “You must be Steve,” he says, and Bucky suddenly remembers that his boyfriend is here, and hasn’t been introduced yet.

“Your majesty,” Steve says in response, shaking T’Challa’s hand from where he’s inexplicably standing on the other side of the bed now.

T’Challa, unlike Bucky, is polite enough not to snort at the formal address, and instead just smiles gently, and says, “T’Challa is fine, Steve. Okoye and Nakia speak highly of you, and I’m grateful for what you’ve done for Bucky. From what I hear, he likes you very much.”

“Oh my _god_ ,” Bucky groans, covering his face with his hand, and kind of wishing he had both so he could better hide his blush. This is the _worst_ part about having a family.

Not that he’d trade it, Bucky thinks as he opens his fingers to peer through them at his brother.

No. He wouldn’t trade it.

🎈

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **Next time:**   
> 


	18. Eighteen: December 9th

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm SO EXCITED for you guys to read this one.... 🥰 Please scream with me in the comments or on twitter ([@apblaidd](https://twitter.com/apblaidd)) if you enjoy it!

T’Challa stays for almost an hour, even though Bucky is sure he has other things he could be doing as monarch. But Bucky has to admit that it’s really nice to see him, and to talk to him for a while. Even Steve relaxes eventually, climbs back in bed with Bucky, and stops calling T’Challa ‘your majesty’ over and over.

Eventually, though, T’Challa has to go, and Bucky’s care team comes back in with orders for Bucky to eat again, and then sleep for a while.

And so the rest of Tuesday, and most of Wednesday, passes by in much of the same boring way. Lots of naps, interspersed by small, frequent meals of bland foods, quiet cuddling with Steve, and Wakandan daytime television that Bucky only sometimes translates for Steve.

By the time Bucky wakes up from the last of his many naps on Wednesday, his head pillowed on Steve’s excellently broad and hairy chest, with Steve’s hand absently stroking his hair, the sun has set.

Bucky grunts sleepily, and Steve responds by immediately kissing the top of his head.

“You awake, sweetheart?” Steve murmurs softly.

Bucky nods, turning his head to nuzzle into Steve’s warm, fuzzy chest. “R’you g’na sleep here again?” he mumbles.

“Actually,” Steve says, brushing his palm from Bucky’s forehead, back across his hair, and then tucking a stray curl behind his ear, “your doctor came in while you were asleep, and said she was about ready to discharge you. You just have to get one more exam tonight, and then you can come back with me to the room they made up for us.”

Bucky sniffs, lifting his head to look up at Steve. “Oh, thank god,” he sighs. “I’m grateful for everything they’ve done to help me, but I _hate_ hospitals.”

“I don’t blame you,” Steve murmurs, pressing his lips to Bucky’s forehead now. “You’re gonna need to come back for withdrawal treatments for a little bit, but your doctor said you’re doing really remarkably well, and everything can be outpatient from now on.”

Bucky hesitates. “Are we gonna stay in the room upstairs?” he asks.

“Tonight, yeah,” Steve tells him. “Tomorrow, she said we can go ahead and move into the palace.”

“The palace?” Bucky parrots.

Steve looks down at him, his eyebrows pulled together slightly. “Do you not want to?” he asks. “Would you rather stay with your parents?”

“No!” Bucky says, too quickly, too vehemently. Steve’s eyebrows raise in concern. “Sorry, I mean....” He trails off. That _is_ what he meant. He’s not sure how to explain why, but Steve doesn’t seem to need him to.

“It sounds like T’Challa may have known that,” Steve says quietly, carding his fingers through Bucky’s hair. “I’m told he’s had a room in the palace made ready for us.”

Steve pauses when Bucky doesn’t answer, searching his expression.

“What’s wrong, baby?” he whispers when he can’t find an answer there.

“I’m gonna see my family tomorrow,” Bucky breathes.

Judging by Steve’s puzzled expression, that’s not much of an explanation, so he wets his lips.

“While T’Challa was here yesterday,” he begins, “when you went to the bathroom, he told me that my family — my parents, my sister, T’Challa’s mom and sister — they don’t know I’m here yet.”

“Why not?” Steve asks, surprised.

Bucky winces. “My parents lost a child when I was taken from them,” he says quietly, “and they lost me again when I stopped talking to them. They haven’t seen or heard from me in years, and then I get here, and I’m hurt. Again. He didn’t want them to go through that worry again, and…and he didn’t want to force me to go through knowing I’d caused that, either. He knows me pretty well.”

Steve nods. “Sounds like it.”

“Yeah, well,” Bucky says, “he also told me that once I’ve been discharged, I need to see them. Let them know I’m here.”

Steve hesitates.

“You can say it,” Bucky tells him, a fond little smile pulling at his worried mouth. “Whatever it is, it won’t offend me.”

Chuckling, Steve nods. “Okay,” he says. “I think that’s fair. I think you _should_ see your family. You love them, and they love you.”

“Yeah,” Bucky agrees. “No, I want to see them, I do. I’m just…nervous,” he finally finishes in a small voice, hiding his face back in Steve’s chest.

But Steve hooks a finger under Bucky’s chin, and turns and lifts his face until he can softly press their lips together. And just like always, Bucky melts under Steve’s kiss.

When Steve pulls back just enough to lean his forehead down to Bucky’s, he whispers, “I get it. I understand. I’m gonna be right there with you, honey, I promise. I always will be.”

Bucky feels his face crumble, right before he darts up to crush their mouths together again.

About half an hour later, after Steve has gone to tell the nurses that Bucky is ready for his exam as soon as someone is available, he’s back in bed with Bucky, snuggling him and stroking his hair again. It’s so comforting and comfortable that Bucky is getting ready to fall asleep again, when Steve’s voice rumbles in his ear.

“Hey, honey?” he asks.

“Hm,” Bucky hums for him to go on.

Steve takes a shaking breath, which rouses Bucky awake and alert at once, but neither of them move.

“I’ve been thinking about—” Steve begins, “what would have happened if you’d ended up in a hospital anywhere else. Where you _don’t_ have a personal relationship with the sovereign ruler.”

Bucky snorts, but doesn’t say anything, just waits for Steve to continue.

“They wouldn’t have let me stay with you,” Steve whispers when he does.

Oh.

“No,” Bucky agrees, “I guess not.”

Steve hesitates again before he says, “You don’t want to stay in Wakanda long, do you?”

Bucky pauses, too. “No,” he answers again. “Not really.”

“Yeah.” Steve sounds thoughtful, and Bucky still doesn’t know what he’s trying to say.

“What’s this about, Stevie?” Bucky asks him, looking up at him at last. He smirks to try to assuage the line between Steve’s brows. “I know you have a point somewhere around here, care to enlighten me about it?”

But Steve doesn’t, and the line doesn’t go away. Instead, he says, “We only met just a little more than four months ago….” And then he trails off cryptically.

“Been a hell of a four months, though,” Bucky tells him, smiling softly at his pretty face. It seems like Steve is trying to say something about their relationship — perhaps that he wants to take a step forward that he’s worried Bucky isn’t ready for? But what the _hell_ could he offer that Bucky wouldn’t want with his whole being?

“You already know me better than anyone else in the world, baby,” Bucky murmurs, pressing a kiss to the corner of Steve’s lovely mouth. “And I love you more than I’ve ever loved anyone, ever. Tell me what you want to tell me, Stevie, I’m not scared.”

At last, Steve smiles back at him, and that line disappears. Stroking Bucky’s hair again, Steve finally outs with it.

“I was thinking,” he says nervously, “maybe we could get married?”

_What?!_

Bucky blinks rapidly. He thought it was something about the two of them, but somehow, he did not expect _that_.

“You wanna get married?” Bucky breathes, wide eyed.

Steve smiles, and nods. “Yeah,” he confirms softly.

Bucky wets his lips, his eyes searching around the room while his mind races. “To me?” he asks at length, which makes Steve bark out a laugh.

“Yeah, Buck,” he says with amusement.

Bucky can’t think of what to ask first. There are so many questions rolling around in his mind, all tumbling out in one word: “Why?”

“‘ _Why’?!_ ” Steve demands, taken aback. “Are you really asking me that? After _everything?_ ”

Bucky sputters, shakes his head. “No, I mean—” he starts, trying hard to figure out how to express himself. “Steve,” he tries, “if it weren’t just shackling you to all of this, I’d—” But then he cuts himself off, because finishing that sentence feels…dangerous.

But Steve looks at him so gently, and prompts, “You’d…?”

Bucky bites down on his lower lip.

Fuck it.

“I’d want nothing more than to marry you, Steve,” he whispers. He’s _not_ scared. He loves Steve so fucking much. He _wants_ to marry him.

But: “You don’t want to?” Steve asks, not understanding. And he doesn’t look hurt, but Bucky suspects he’s not taking the idea that Bucky doesn’t want to marry him as casually as he’s trying to convey.

So Bucky _quickly_ jumps on that idea, telling him, “No, of _course_ I want to, but _you_ shouldn’t!”

Okay, maybe that doesn’t make a lot of sense either (Bucky is apparently having a hard time with that lately), because the crease between Steve’s eyebrows is back as he frowns down at Bucky in confusion.

“Okay, wait,” Bucky says, and then shifts, pulling Steve up with him until they’re both sitting up and looking at each other.

He takes Steve’s hand, and says seriously, “This can’t just be about convenience, baby, and it can’t just be about being allowed to stay with me in the hospital in case something happens outside of Wakanda. They put a target on your back just because you were _dating_ me. If you were my—”

Bucky cuts himself off right before he accidentally says, ‘ _my husband_ ’, because just the thought of that word ignites a fire of _want_ inside his belly.

“If we were married,” he says instead, “they’d kill you. They wouldn’t hesitate, and they wouldn’t try to threaten me with it, they’d just do it.” Bucky sighs. “I can’t let that happen,” he finishes in a desperate whisper. “I want you _forever_ , but I can’t put you in the line of fire like that.”

“Babydoll,” Steve says, smiling softly and reaching up with his free hand to tuck Bucky’s hair behind his ear, “I’m already in this with you. I’m here. I _choose_ to be. I _want_ to be, so I can be with you.”

Steve leans in and brushes Bucky’s nose with his own, and Bucky eyes flutter shut at the overwhelming tenderness in Steve’s touch.

“I already knew that I loved you,” Steve breathes to him. “That I’d do absolutely anything for you. But getting so close to _losing_ you— I don’t _ever_ want that to happen. I want to live forever beside you, sweetheart. I want to wake up next to you every morning for the rest of my life. I want it all, Buck. I want it _bad_.”

Steve pulls back, and shines the sunshine of his smile at Bucky as he vows, “I already know I’m gonna love you ‘til I die, honey. If you feel the same way—then marry me. I love you more than _life_.”

Bucky’s pretty sure he stopped breathing at some point while Steve was talking.

Awestruck, he whispers, “You’re really proposing to me.”

“I am,” Steve tells him, grinning.

Bucky gapes at him, eyes and mouth all wide open. He takes a breath to speak, but nothing comes out. Another breath, and still nothing. Then, finally, what ends up tumbling out of his mouth is: “Are you sure?”

Steve grins at him. “Is that a yes, sweetheart,” he asks pointedly, “or a no?”

The smile that pulls at Bucky’s mouth is so wide and all-encompassing, it’s almost painful. Steve’s face in his vision blurs a little as he blinks away tears.

“It’s a yes,” he whispers. He’s never, ever, been so sure of _anything_ before this. “Yes, Stevie, I’ll marry you. _God_ , I love you so much.”

Steve pushes to Bucky just as Bucky darts to him, and their mouths crash together in a blindingly happy kiss, arms scrambling to hold each other tight. And as Bucky cries into their kiss, Steve laughs.

They’re getting married. Bucky Barnes, who never thought he’d ever be allowed to get close enough to another person even to fall in love with them, who found everything he’s never allowed himself to want and more in this man here with him, is going to marry Steve Rogers, and be his husband forever.

The joy of it is almost suffocating. But Bucky will _happily_ drown in this feeling.

“Easy, Buck,” Steve laughs a low rumble against Bucky’s lips, and it’s only then that Bucky realizes his hips have twisted, and he’s unconsciously pushing them forward, seeking friction. One of Steve’s hands lands heavy on his hip, and grips it tightly. Betraying his own need, despite the calming tone he’s speaking in. “Your doctor is still set to come in any minute, pal, just hold on another hour, and we’ll be alone.”

“Steve—” Bucky grits out, “I _need_ —”

“God, _fuck_ ,” Steve sighs. “Me too. Okay, hang on.”

He repositions them, lying them both back down and facing them toward each other.

“You’re hooked up to all sorts of monitors right now, sweets,” Steve murmurs, running his left hand up and down Bucky’s side, “which means someone is _definitely_ going to come in if you start getting too into this, so I can’t get you off yet, okay?”

Bucky nods helplessly. He doesn’t care, as long as Steve _touches him_. Hasn’t felt Steve’s hands on him like this in _days_. _Needs_ him, more than breathing.

Steve snakes his left arm around Bucky’s waist, pulls him closer. And Bucky clings to Steve’s shoulders while Steve shifts over his own right arm, until his warm palm comes to rest against Bucky’s half-hard cock, over his hospital sweats.

“There you go, baby,” Steve purrs as Bucky begins to rut against Steve’s hand, and Steve rubs him over his clothes. “That’s it. That what you need?”

Bucky nods again, wordlessly, biting his lip so he doesn’t moan out loud, and instead making hitched little gasps in Steve’s ear.

“Yeah,” Steve murmurs, “I got you. Always give you what you need, Buck, always. Rest’a my life.” He squeezes Bucky tighter and presses a kiss to his cheek. “You belong right here, baby. No doubt in my mind, this is _exactly_ where you belong, right here in my arms.”

A little whimper escapes, unbidden, from Bucky’s lips. “Steve,” he gasps, and at once, the heel of Steve’s hand presses down on his erection, pulling him back down from careening toward the edge, keeping Bucky’s heart rate from ratcheting up. “Stevie—love you so much.”

“I love you too, Bucky,” Steve soughs in his ear. “You have _no_ idea.”

Bucky turns his head, and kisses Steve’s sweet mouth, sliding his tongue across Steve’s, and letting out the softest moan when Steve squeezes his cock to help pull him back even more.

And just in time, too, because as soon as Bucky’s breathing has leveled out, there’s a quick knock on the door, and it opens as Bucky’s doctor comes in to clear and discharge him.

It’s another forty minutes or so before Steve gets Bucky inside the room that’s been made up for them. Even though Bucky’s still tired and bruised, it’s a huge relief to see him somewhere that isn’t a hospital bed.

In fact, watching Bucky look around the room, a small smile playing on his lips, Steve feels _ecstatically_ happy. Bucky is safe and well, released from constant supervision in the hospital, and doing much better—and he agreed to _marry Steve_.

Bucky is Steve’s _fiancé_.

It hardly feels real.

Steve reaches out, and Bucky comes to him. Allows himself to be held tightly, warmly, in Steve’s arms.

Steve presses kisses upon kisses to Bucky’s hair, his face. “You realize we’re fiancés now?” he breathes in between the press of his lips.

Bucky laughs with sweet delight. “Yeah,” he replies wonderingly. “We’re gonna be _husbands_ soon.”

The thrill of that rushes electrically through Steve’s body. “My husband,” he murmurs, trying it on for size. Bucky shivers. “What do you think about making that happen sooner rather than later?”

“Yes,” Bucky says immediately, fervently. “Tomorrow. Soon as we can.”

Steve chuckles, but he feels exactly the same. “Okay,” he agrees, “soon as we can.”

They might not manage to get married _tomorrow_ , exactly, but if Bucky wants him to, Steve will do everything in his power to find them an officiant and get them married at the earliest possible moment.

He pulls back just enough to kiss Bucky deeply again, and Bucky surges to meet him.

It’s getting into sloppy, teeth-clacking territory, when Bucky suddenly pulls away, his hand planted against Steve’s chest to stop him from just following and keeping the kiss going, without any higher brain function catching on that Bucky is trying to say something. Which. Okay, that’s actually fair. Steve’s mind does have a tendency to shut down into total, primal, caveman mode when he’s in the same room as Bucky and turned on. But really, could anyone in the _world_ blame him?

“I need to shower,” Bucky says, almost reluctantly. He had something of a shower earlier today, but it was quick and compulsory, and Steve has been able to tell from the way he keeps rubbing at his scalp that he still doesn’t feel like his hair is clean.

So Steve nods. “You want one by yourself?” he asks, but Bucky is already shaking his head no. “You want me to come with you,” Steve concludes with a smile.

Bucky grins.

Steve turns the water up to scorching, which is how Bucky tends to like it anyway, but especially today, maybe it will help him feel like he’s finally washed off the remnants of those three god-awful days in captivity.

Bucky strips while Steve is getting the shower prepared, and steps in the second it’s ready. So while Steve is undressing, he watches through the glass shower walls as Bucky stands under the spray.

Bucky tilts his head back into the stream of steaming water, and makes a very sexual-sounding moan. A smile tugs at Steve’s mouth as he watches Bucky melt into the feeling of finally really washing his hair of everything he went through.

He’s still very bruised all over his pale, thin body, a stark reminder of the pain inflicted on him. They clearly beat him. Multiple times, based on the scattered constellations of dark purple and faded yellow. And he said Rumlow threatened him with worse.

Steve gets into the shower, and without even opening his eyes, Bucky reaches for him, pulling their bodies together under the water, and sighing contentedly.

“Will you wash my hair, Stevie?” he asks in a small, pretty-please kind of voice. “It’s harder with only one hand.”

“Honey,” Steve murmurs, tripping over the depth of honesty his voice betrays, pressing his entire face against Bucky’s cheek, “you don’t even have to ask.”

One thing Steve has discovered, in the weeks they’ve spent on the road together, is that Bucky _loves_ it when Steve washes his hair. He’s even told Steve before that he does it exceptionally well, with just the right amount of pressure on his scalp. Steve is even pretty sure that’s true, and not just praise to make him want to do it for Bucky more — not that he needs it; Steve needs no excuse whatsoever to spend every moment touching Bucky. But this time, Bucky’s eyes close, his mouth drops open, and he starts making these moaning sounds, like Steve is _fucking_ him instead of working shampoo through his hair, and it _really_ isn’t fair.

Steve hasn’t been inside Bucky in five days. Maybe it’s pathetic, but this is the longest they’ve gone without it since they started having sex a few weeks ago, and he spent three days genuinely terrified that he was never going to see Bucky alive again. He’s _desperate_ for it.

But Bucky just went through something awful, and Steve is _not_ about to ask him to do anything that might trigger a trauma response.

Unfortunately, that resolve does fuck-all to stop Steve from getting achingly hard at Bucky’s incredibly sexual appreciation of his hair-washing abilities.

Even more unfortunately, Bucky still has them pressed so close, he notices right away. He laughs softly, and cocks his hip so he can shift his thigh between Steve’s legs. Which, of course, punches a soft little wanting sound from Steve’s throat.

Steve valiantly ignores his intense erection, and the deep urge to grind against the creamy thigh between his legs, to finish rinsing out Bucky’s hair, and then reaches for the conditioner while Bucky leans forward and mouths at his jaw.

“ _Fuck_ , honey,” Steve sighs, his steely resolve swaying dramatically at the feeling of Bucky’s lips and hot, slick tongue on his skin. “You know we don’t—we don’t have to—”

“What?” Bucky asks, pulling away to give Steve a surprised, confused look. But understanding dawns over his face almost immediately, and he squeezes his arm around Steve’s waist again. He rubs his hand up Steve’s back, pressing it in between Steve’s shoulder blades as he murmurs, “No, baby, I _want_ to. I want _you_.”

“Are you sure?” Steve asks. His breath hitches.

Bucky takes a breath of his own, and as he tries to think of what he wants to say, Steve starts carding big dollops of conditioner through his beautiful, dark curls.

Eventually, Bucky speaks again. “The first time Nat and I were together was the first time I ever had sex because I _wanted_ to,” he explains. “And suddenly, I understood that it could be something good. That it didn’t need to be about…being forcibly controlled. That it wasn’t _supposed_ to be about that at all.” A small little smile lights on his face as he remembers. “It took us a little while to figure out how to do it _well_ , but just that first time, when she climbed into my lap, and we fumbled our way through it—we were doing that together. And it was _incredible_ , because it was something good between us. Something we wanted.”

Steve lets his eyes fall from Bucky’s hair, back to his clear, silver-blue eyes, trained so intently on Steve as he rinses the conditioner off his hands behind Bucky’s head. That look is arresting. Heart stopping. Steve loves him so fucking much.

“I _want_ you,” Bucky whispers the truth between them. “I want to remember that it can be good. That with you, it’s _good_.” His hand starts to travel over Steve’s back again, down, then up, then down again, dipping lower, over the curve of Steve’s ass. “I want to feel you all over me, and know that you’ll keep me safe. I _know_ you will.”

Steve nods, and leans forward. He can do that. “Okay, baby,” he whispers back, his lips brushing over Bucky’s. “Okay.”

This kiss is soft at first. A promise. Every promise Steve will ever make for the rest of his entire life. Then, gradually, it grows. Intensifies. Until Bucky is gasping against Steve’s mouth, grinding against the thigh Steve has pushed up between his legs for exactly this purpose.

Steve is taking extra care to give Bucky everything he needs, everything he wants. He’s _very_ careful to be gentle, to be tender. Not that that’s hard. Not with Bucky. Not when Steve’s only true desire in life is to make Bucky happy, to keep him safe, to love him well.

But as soon as he reaches slowly back, spreading Bucky’s cheeks just enough to brush one finger across his soft, puckered hole, Bucky hisses, and Steve stops short. He keeps his finger hovering, just waiting for Bucky to either tell him to keep going, or to stop.

It takes a minute of Bucky just breathing heavily, his face pressed into the curve of Steve’s neck, his arm clenched tight around Steve’s back. Until, eventually, he just gasps, “ _Steve_ —”

And that’s it.

“Do you want to stop for now?” Steve asks him, his voice calm, though his heart is fucking _shattered_ that Bucky is feeling like this. That someone _made_ Bucky feel like this.

That they’re here together, intimate, and loving, and safe…and Bucky is _afraid_.

But: “No, I—” Bucky stammers. “Can I—?” And then he stops again.

Steve thinks he knows, though, what Bucky wants. “Do you want to fuck me?” he asks softly. It’s still a reiteration of the goodness of sex between the two them, but it’s not as much of a reminder of what Bucky was threatened with.

Bucky’s breathing is ragged, and he doesn’t raise his head yet as he says in a small, quiet voice, “I still want you to take care of me.”

_Fuck_.

Steve rubs Bucky’s back, and smiles on purpose, turning to kiss his ear, his wet hair, whatever part of Bucky he can reach. “I can still do that with you inside me,” he offers warmly.

And finally, Bucky lifts his head, and looks desperately into Steve’s eyes. “Will you ride me?” he asks.

Steve grins.

“Yeah, honey,” he breathes, so fucking _glad_ to have something to do to help, and something he’d be _thrilled_ to do anyway. “ _Fuck_ yeah.”

Steve quickly finishes cleaning them both up in the shower, taking care when washing Bucky’s bruised body, rinsing the conditioner from his hair, and then speedily going through the same process on himself without much regard. When the water is off, and Bucky is wrapped in a big, fluffy towel, Steve grabs his own shirt from the pile of his clothes he left on the bathroom sink, and scrunches at Bucky’s curls the way he’s seen Bucky do it. Just enough that they aren’t completely soaked and dripping over his shoulders anymore. And then he pulls Bucky back into the bedroom.

Slowly and heatedly, Steve unwraps his hot, naked fiancé from his towel like a present on Christmas. As he does, he lavishes every inch of Bucky’s body that he can reach with loving, urgent kisses. Sunlight on a Sunday morning. Raindrops over autumn leaves. Promises kept, and hopes fulfilled.

Bucky’d lost his erection when the image of Crossbones’ threats from the other day came rushing back to him, but as Steve covers him in the gentlest and truest love he has ever known, his dick gets back with the program. Steve catches him around the waist with one arm, and lowers them both slowly down onto the bed, dropping his own towel from around his waist. And while Bucky is scooting up the bed, Steve crosses quickly to their bags to get the lube.

“Put your head down,” Steve laughs when he looks over to see Bucky uncertainly holding his head up an inch over the pillow.

“My hair’s wet,” Bucky protests, because that’s the realization that suddenly stopped him from lying all the way down. “The pillow’s gonna get soaked.”

“There are more pillows,” Steve tells him, reaching over and opening the wooden wardrobe in the corner to show Bucky the stack of extra pillows stored in there. “Put your head down, you beautiful pinhead.”

“Hey!” Bucky squawks indignantly, but he’s laughing too hard to truly sound offended.

Dropping his head back onto the pillow, he reaches down and strokes over his own cock as Steve watches with dark, fixed eyes.

Bucky smiles at him, all teeth, enjoying being watched, enjoying the opportunity to take in his own eyeful of Steve — hot, and huge, and deliciously hairy.

“You gonna come join me?” he asks breathily, settling into the pleasant feeling of his hand. Not trying to get himself off, just enjoying the warmth that spreads through him at his own touch, and his boyf—his _fiancé’s_ eyes on him. “Or you just planning on watching?”

A catlike grin spreads slowly across Steve’s face, and his stance would look casual if Bucky couldn’t see the way his strong hand is flexing and gripping over the bottle of lube he’s holding.

“Wouldn’t object to a show, if you wanted to put one on for me,” he drawls out, his voice deep and dangerous. “But I’ve kinda got my heart set on riding you into the sunset.”

Bucky laughs again, and Steve’s eyes crinkle with joy at the sound. Those eyes track Bucky’s hand as he strokes up his own length and thumbs at the slit of his cock, and as Bucky’s eyes close at the pleasure of it, Steve lets out a soft moan of appreciation.

And that seems to do it, because when Bucky opens his eyes again, Steve is suddenly crossing back to the bed, climbing in over Bucky from the foot of it, all the way up, until he’s ducking to plant a pushing, needy kiss to Bucky’s lips.

“Want me to suck you off some first?” Steve asks against Bucky’s mouth, but Bucky shakes his head.

“Want you to swallow me up with those big, strong arms of yours,” he whispers back. “Want you to sit on my cock. Want you on top of me, let me feel you everywhere.”

Steve kisses Bucky again, sweeping his tongue deeply into the moue of Bucky’s mouth.

“Okay, Buck,” he whispers after a long moment just tasting him. “I’ve got you, sweetheart, you know I do.”

“I know you do,” Bucky agrees, and his voice betrays him, breaks in the middle. But Steve just kisses him deep and filthy again, then sits up, knees planted on either side of Bucky’s hips, angling to brush his ass over Bucky’s hard cock, which makes Bucky’s breath hitch, too.

“You wanna open me up, sweetheart?” Steve asks, low and honey-sweet. “Or do you want me to do it?”

“Why don’t you let me watch you?” Bucky purrs, running his hand from Steve’s knee, up his thigh, to his small waist.

Steve huffs seductively, and nods, popping the cap open on the bottle of lube, and coating his fingers quickly and urgently. He reaches behind himself and sighs as he starts rubbing a finger over his hole, locking hooded eyes with Bucky, and smiling.

Bucky shivers at the look on Steve’s face. This amazing man is genuinely the hottest thing Bucky has ever seen in his whole entire life, and he’s _Bucky’s_. And Bucky is _his_.

_Fuck_.

Bucky watches in Steve’s expression the moment he slides a finger inside himself. His eyelids flutter as his eyes roll back, and his breath all sighs out in a satisfied _hahhh_. Bucky lets his hand reach back, over the swell of Steve’s bountiful ass, squeezing and kneading appreciatively.

He could get used to this view: Steve, naked and gorgeous, sitting up over his lap, and fingering himself open for Bucky’s cock, blissed-out expression all over his face.

A wave of goosebumps rolls over Bucky’s entire body as he realizes that he has the rest of his life to get used to this view.

Steve steadily works himself up to three fingers, gasping and moaning through the whole thing. And even though he isn’t taking as much time with himself as he does with Bucky, by the time Steve’s pulling his fingers out to grab the bottle of lube again, Bucky is _desperate_ for it. Which Steve can definitely tell, based on the way he mumbles a laugh as he strokes a palmful of lube over Bucky’s cock. 

Bucky lets out a shuddering moan at the touch of Steve’s hand on him — _god, he loves this man, loves his touch, loves him loves him loves him_ — and Steve is shifting forward, lining up with Bucky’s cock. And then, terribly slowly, he sinks down, inch by hot, delicious inch, until he’s fully seated, with Bucky’s cock buried all the way inside him.

Bucky’s chest rises and falls in heaving breaths, and Steve bends down over him, sealing their lips together, languidly fucking Bucky’s mouth with his tongue. He’s sunshine, Bucky thinks. Steve is the sun, and Bucky will happily be his moon, reflect his light and his goodness for all to see, follow him anywhere, watch him light up the whole goddamn world.

That would be enough. That would be so much more than enough.

When Bucky finally hears himself whine against Steve’s mouth, Steve grins and sits up again. His breath hitches as he sits back on Bucky’s cock, takes him even deeper.

“You are—” Steve gasps, grinding his hips, and making Bucky groan out loud, “—so _fucking_ gorgeous, honey. You feel so fucking _good_.”

“Fuck,” Bucky says eloquently. He doesn’t even fully register the way something inside of him purrs every time he hears the right voice, the right man, calling him honey. “Stevie, you feel _so_ good, _fuck_.”

His brain doesn’t catch up until his feet are already planted on the bed, and he’s thrusting up into Steve, hard enough to knock him forward so forcefully, Steve has to catch himself on his hands.

“Sorry,” Bucky gasps. He didn’t mean to do that, meant to let Steve grind on him a while, take things at his pace, make sure it’s great for both of them tonight. They both need this, they’ve both been hurting for it, Bucky knows that, deep and sure.

But Steve shakes his head, ducking down for another kiss before he says, “Don’t worry about me, honey, I’m here for you. Gonna make you feel so good, huh?”

He pushes up on his huge, muscular arms again, and pushes back onto Bucky’s cock.

“I’m all yours.”

He circles his hips. Punches a moan from Bucky’s lips.

“My whole body, all yours. You take what you need from me tonight, okay?”

Steve brushes a damp lock of hair off of Bucky’s forehead with a tenderness that contrasts the way he rises up, arching his back, and then slides back down, fast and hard and gut-punching.

“Anything you want, _everything_ you want, all of it — it’s _yours_.”

And then, like he can’t help it, Steve leans back down for one more quick kiss, and whispers, “I’m yours.”

Bucky trembles at that promise. Swallows it. Aches with it. And when Steve lifts himself up a little on his knees again, Bucky fucks up into him, and they both gasp at the spike of pleasure.

“Fuck,” Bucky sighs, and does it again.

And again.

And then he’s really and truly fucking Steve, taking what he needs at Steve’s soft, sweet encouragement.

Steve’s little _ah, ah, ah_ sounds climb higher and higher in pitch as Bucky’s thrusts get rougher and faster, more and more out of control as his pleasure builds and builds.

“Steve,” he grits out a warning as Steve’s fingers pinch and roll his sensitive nipples, “I’m gonna—”

“Take it, gorgeous,” Steve growls breathlessly, “take what’s yours.”

Bucky frowns, chasing his pleasure, but still trying not to take a flying leap over the edge until Steve is there, too. “But you haven’t—” he protests weakly.

“Take it,” Steve cuts him off firmly, a command.

So Bucky does.

It’s one, two, three more thrusts, and then Bucky is coming, tipping at last over the edge as the orgasm crests over him, pulses out of him, his hips flush with Steve’s perfect ass. And Steve murmurs praise to him through it all, moaning, and running warm, gentle hands over Bucky’s chest, grazing lightly over the big, rounded bruises on his stomach.

And when Bucky’s body gratefully releases all of its tension all at once, and he flops back onto the pillows, Steve leans down and kisses him stupid. His soft beard tickles around Bucky’s mouth.

And Bucky _wants_. He wants, and he’s just soft enough around the edges to not be afraid.

“Fuck me,” he whispers.

Steve looks down at him, a careful hopefulness in his eyes. “You sure?” he asks.

Bucky nods. Yes. He wants this, wants it while he’s pliant and unworried. Wants to remember how good it really is, how much he trusts Steve with his whole body. “Want you to.”

Steve smiles, bright and happy. “More than happy to, Buck,” he murmurs. “You wanna roll over?”

But: “ _No!_ ” Bucky gasps, too quick, too sharp, grabbing at Steve’s thigh without even meaning to. “No,” he repeats, softer, calmer, “please, like this. Wanna see you.” _Needs_ to see him, truthfully. Needs to be able to look at him, and remind himself it’s _Steve_ , and no one else.

“Okay,” Steve is responding already, stroking a thumb gently over Bucky’s cheek, “that’s fine, I’ll stay where you can see me, huh?”

Bucky nods, so fucking grateful.

“Sit on my face,” Steve says suddenly, climbing up off of Bucky’s cock, cum dripping enticingly out of him, to lie down next to Bucky instead.

“Whuh?” Bucky asks, and Steve takes hold of his face and kisses him.

“Sit on my face, baby,” he whispers, his lips brushing against Bucky’s lips, “lemme make you feel good.”

And. Well. Bucky’s not going to say no to _that_.

He pushes himself up, and gets on his knees, while Steve rolls on his back and scoots down the bed a little, reaching out and grabbing hold of Bucky’s hips to bring him over. Bucky turns, swinging one knee over to the other side of Steve’s head, and Steve pulls him down, sliding his hands down just enough to spread Bucky’s cheeks as he lowers Bucky down to his face.

A warm, wet tongue lapping at his entrance feels _so_ fucking different from a dry finger. Even more, the scratch of Steve’s wonderful beard in Bucky’s most sensitive places — almost painful, almost too much, but not at all. Bucky shakes with it, the way Steve licks him open, thoroughly follows through on his promise to make Bucky feel good.

Bucky runs his hand over the ridges of Steve’s abs, tight and engaged as he leans up to fuck into Bucky with his tongue. Steve’s body is fucking _godlike_ , Bucky thinks as he feels his way across Steve’s stomach to his chest, squeezes at those firm, pillowy tits. He rolls Steve’s nipples between his thumb and forefinger on one side, then the other. Steve moans out a laugh against Bucky’s hole, the shuddering of his breath and his beard causing Bucky’s eyes to roll back.

“ _Steve!_ ” he whines breathlessly, unthinkingly pushing back against Steve’s tongue. Steve just laughs again, and presses a chaste kiss against Bucky’s hole.

“Hand me the lube, honey,” Steve says, intentionally breathing hot on the wetness of his own saliva, and the place where he’s beginning to leave a searing and exquisite beard burn.

Bucky blindly pats around for the bottle before he finds it in the sheets, and thrusts it into Steve’s hand. Steve pulls his arms under Bucky’s thighs, one at a time. Bucky hears the bottle’s cap click, and then Steve’s mouth is back, this time joined by a slick finger slipping inside him.

While Steve’s tongue keeps working, his beard keeps burning, and his fingers prod at Bucky’s rim, pulling and stretching him open, Steve’s dry left hand slides up Bucky’s side, squeezing at his chest for a moment before he reaches all the way up, and slips two fingers between Bucky’s lips.

Bucky starts sucking at those fingers instinctively, wraps his tongue around them, and takes them further into his mouth, starting to lose himself in it. Steve groans into him, finger-fucking him on both ends, and Bucky is just about overwhelmed with it. He lets go completely, gives himself over to Steve entirely. Jumps, and feels a rush of gratitude at the fall.

_This_ is what he wanted. Steve, holding him, catching him. Allowing him to give up control, taking it when it’s entrusted. Steve, possessing him. Owning him.

Taking care of him.

And then, all at once, Bucky is _actually_ falling sideways, being flipped and manhandled, and before he truly understands what’s happening, Steve is lying on top of him and fucking Bucky’s _mouth_ with his tongue now, instead. Bucky gasps in a breath that exhales as a moan when Steve pushes his knees up to his chest.

“Ready?” Steve gasps, scooping the lube up again, and quickly slicking up his cock. And at Bucky’s fervent nod, he lines up, and slips inside.

Despite his urgency, and Bucky’s enthusiasm, Steve slides in slowly, letting Bucky’s body stretch around him. He presses hot, wet kisses against Bucky’s throat, and bites down on the corded muscle just under his ear.

Bucky lets out a sob at the excruciating pleasure of the stretch, of feeling Steve inside him and all over him after days that felt like a lifetime without him. After all the fear, and pain, and hurt.

Steve doesn’t hurt. Steve feels like _home_.

“Fuck me,” Bucky whispers as Steve just holds there, buried inside him. “Fuck me, fuck me, please, Stevie, _fuck me_ — _ah!_ ”

As Bucky begs him to, Steve starts fucking him in earnest, pulling out only just enough to thrust right back in, pounding against Bucky’s spot, building from a gentle fuck to absolutely _railing_ him. And Bucky just keeps whispering, _please, please, please,_ and _I love you, I love you, I love you_.

And then, suddenly, Bucky is coming again, his orgasm hitting him like a freight train out of fucking _nowhere_. He’s trembling and spasming and oh, that high, keening noise is coming from _him_ , and then Steve shoves deep inside him and stills, and Bucky can feel Steve spilling inside him, a few hard spurts as Steve shakes through it, too.

When he’s totally spent, Steve slumps over Bucky, and their faces find each other blindly. They don’t really _kiss_ so much as breathe heavily into each other’s mouths for a minute.

“I missed you,” Steve whispers ardently, after he’s caught his breath just enough to speak.

Bucky tilts his face up, and catches Steve’s mouth with his. “I missed you, too,” he sighs against Steve’s lips. _Fuck_ , did he miss this man, missed the way Steve fucks him sweet, and hard, and _good_.

Steve lifts his head. Looks carefully into Bucky’s eyes.

“Are you okay?” he asks. “Was this—?”

“Thank you,” Bucky breathes sincerely, in a rush, reaching up to brush his knuckles lightly over Steve’s face. “Thank you, baby, thank you, thank you—”

“You don’t have to thank me,” Steve tells him firmly, cutting him off. “I love you. I love you so _fucking_ much, darling, anything I can do to make you feel okay, I’m gonna fucking do.”

Bucky stares directly into the bluest sky of Steve’s soft eyes, and wets his lips. “Thank you,” he insists, cupping Steve’s bearded jaw in his palm. “I love you, and _thank you._ ”

Steve smiles.

And kisses him again.

🎈

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **Next time:**   
> 
> 
> [The National Sexual Assault Hotline](http://online.rainn.org/) provides support and resources to people who have been affected sexual violence. Anyone affected by sexual assault, whether it happened to you or someone you care about, can find support on the National Sexual Assault Hotline. It is confidential and safe. Call 1-800-656-4673, or you can visit [online.rainn.org](http://online.rainn.org/) to receive support via confidential online chat.


	19. Nineteen: December 10th

Steve watches Bucky pace around the room for maybe the seven hundredth time in the last few minutes, picking things up and then just putting them back down again, and repeating the process ad nauseam until Steve finally walks directly up to him and stops him with both hands on his face.

“You’re gonna be fine,” Steve tells him firmly. “It’s all gonna be fine.”

“What if they don’t like me anymore?” Bucky asks breathlessly, his face pinched with anxiety. “What if I hurt them too much this time?”

Steve smiles kindly at his darling love, and says, “That’s stupid.”

At least it gets Bucky to laugh.

“Sweetheart,” Steve murmurs, leaning in to press a few soft kisses to one of Bucky’s cheeks, “you are a kindness in my life,” and then the other, “and I know you’re a kindness in theirs. Stop worrying, and let’s just go see them, huh?”

Bucky takes a deep, shaky breath. “Okay,” he whispers.

Steve releases his face to lace their fingers around each other, and they leave the sanctuary of their private room together.

The walk up to the palace is _amazing_. The Wakandan capitol is stunningly beautiful. Street art is splashed across walls right next to ancient structures; this nation’s history, its present, and its future stood side by side, hand in hand.

Steve is in awe of it all — of the bright colors, and the vibrant life-filled streets, the sounds, and the _smells_. But anxious energy is still buzzing off of Bucky. His eyes are fixed straight ahead, staring at the palace itself, still partially obstructed. But then they pass one of the last structures blocking it from full view, and Steve looks up and gasps.

The palace is a massive circular structure, two tall towers surrounded by step platforms like spiral staircases, covered in green. It’s _beautiful_.

Bucky tugs a little at his hand, and Steve realizes he’s stopped walking to stare. He lets Bucky pull him forward, and as they approach the colossal, ornate glass doors, it becomes clear that there are people standing in front of it, waiting.

Bucky’s breath stutters. Steve squeezes his hand.

Once they’re close enough, Steve can make out the features of the two women standing near the front of the group. One is a young Wakandan woman with regal posture and beautiful braids set in a complicated pattern, and the other…looks exactly like Bucky.

Okay, maybe not _exactly._ All of the sharp edges on his face are a little softer on hers; her jaw, though still square, is thinner than his; her lips just a little bit rounder; her curls blonder; the cleft in his chin barely a dimple in hers. But when she turns and catches sight of them, Steve can see that her eyes are the same shape and exact same shade of light, silvery blue that has become Steve’s favorite color in the world.

That has to be Becca.

As soon as she sees Bucky, her silvery blue eyes widen in delight, and she takes off running for him. Bucky’s hand suddenly slips from Steve’s as he runs toward her, too, though slower, and still weak.

Halfway between Steve and the palace, they collide, clinging to each other as they nearly knock themselves right over with their enthusiasm.

As Steve walks up to them, hovering a few feet away to give them their space, he can hear them both laughing and crying together, and Becca keeps squealing, ‘ _Bucky! Bucky!_ ’ again and again.

Eventually, Bucky pulls back and puts his hand on her shoulder so he can look at her. “Bex,” he breathes wonderingly. “Look at you, you’re all grown up.”

Becca throws her head back the exact same way Bucky does when he laughs hard like that. “I was almost twenty-seven the last time you saw me!” she cries, and wipes at the tears falling down her face.

Bucky mirrors her, and grins through it. “Yeah,” he agrees, “and now you’re thirty-two. You’re grown up!”

Becca makes a dismissive _pfft_ sound, waving it off like it’s a ridiculous notion, and then turns to Steve.

“Either you’re Steve,” she guesses, “or my brother has taken to carting around more than one blond himbo with goo-goo eyes just for him.”

“ _Becca!_ ” Bucky hisses, mortified, while Steve laughs, but Becca ignores him in favor of reaching out and pulling Steve into a tight hug. “How do you even know his name already?” Bucky asks at the same time Steve tells her, “It’s so nice to meet you.”

“You too, Steve,” Becca says warmly, then turns to Bucky. “T’Challa told us, you fucking nerd.”

“Speaking of ‘us’!” the young Wakandan woman yells from where she’s still standing in front of the small crowd of people by the doors, all of whom look like they’re champing at the bit for their turns at hugging Bucky. “There are more people who would like to see him!”

Becca and Bucky both roll their eyes at the same time, and it’s almost like seeing double. But then Bucky is seizing Steve’s hand again, and yanking him toward the group, all of his anxiety gone, and replaced with nothing but eager excitement at seeing these people he loves so much.

Steve is introduced to every family member, one at a time, by Becca, while Bucky is passed from tight hug to tight hug, teary joy all around. The young Wakandan woman is her royal highness, Princess Shuri, and Steve is also introduced to Queen Ramonda, the queen mother, standing beside T’Challa, and a tall, handsome Wakandan man named Sipho, who Bucky hasn’t mentioned to Steve before, but who he hugs like he knows him well.

“You may need to wait a minute to meet my parents,” Becca tells Steve in a low voice, glancing over to where two older white people, who both also look exactly like Bucky, but in very different ways, are holding him so tightly, Steve is vaguely worried about Bucky’s ability to breathe right now. But Bucky is crying into their shoulders, and they’re murmuring to him quietly, so everyone else is standing a little ways away to give them their privacy.

“That’s okay,” Steve replies to Becca, smiling softly after Bucky.

“Fuck, you _really_ love him, don’t you?” Becca says out of nowhere.

Steve turns to her. She’s smiling up at him shrewdly.

“It’s all over your face,” she tells him in response to his curious expression, and Steve laughs.

“I _really_ love him,” he confirms, which seems to please Becca.

It takes a while, but eventually, Bucky’s parents let go of him — and he lets go of them — enough for Becca to introduce them to Steve.Winnifred is a small, round woman with a kind face and frizzy brown and grey curls, and insists on Steve calling her ‘Winnie.’ George is only two or three inches shorter than Bucky, grey-haired and sporting the same cleft in his chin that his son clearly inherited from him. His laughter lines are deep, but so are the lines between his eyebrows. His hug is warm and solid in a way only a dad’s really can be.

Bucky sniffs, looking around at everyone, clearly at a loss for words, and when he blindly holds out his hand toward Steve, Steve immediately steps up to him and takes it. There’s a bit of a cacophony of noise as everyone tries to speak at once, to tell Bucky what sounds like everything that’s happened over the last five-plus years, but then Becca clears her throat. And Steve has known these people for about two minutes total, but even he can tell that the silence that falls over them all at that is nothing short of miraculous.

“Bucky,” Becca begins like she’s about to say something very important indeed, “I have some news.”

Bucky blinks, and Steve watches an entire rolodex of possibilities flip through his mind, unsure if he should be excited or scared.

But then Becca reaches out her hand, much like Bucky did just a moment ago for Steve’s, and Sipho takes it, smiling at her.

“Sipho and I are engaged,” Becca tells Bucky softly, a sweet, quiet joy lighting up her eyes.

Bucky’s mouth drops open. His eyebrows shoot up to his hairline. “You are?” he gasps.

Becca and Sipho both nod, joy bright in their eyes. Bucky darts forward to wrap them both in another squeezy hug.

“I’m so happy for you!” Bucky gushes. “God, you’ve been together what? Eight years? When did this happen?”

“About two years ago,” Sipho answers, and the happiness on Bucky’s face only falters for half a second before it’s back, and he’s sweeping Sipho into another hug.

“Damn, you’ve been engaged _two years_ and you’re not married yet?” he teases, letting go of Sipho to hug Becca again. Steve wonders if their family is always this delightfully huggy, or if it’s just that this is a special occasion. “What’s the holdup, Sipho? She making you wait?”

Bucky doesn’t catch the exasperated look Becca and Sipho share over his shoulder, but Steve does. In that moment, he knows _exactly_ why they’ve been engaged for two years, and not gotten married yet.

They’ve been waiting for Bucky to come back home. So they can have him at their wedding.

Neither of them says anything even slightly to indicate that, though, both just laughing at Bucky’s teasing, the distinct ‘ _I love my brother, but I’m about to murder him_ ,’ expression completely gone from Becca’s face when Bucky looks at her again. They probably don’t want to make him feel guilty for cutting them out, Steve understands. He can already see how much of Bucky’s family is reflected in him.

This is an entire clan of genuinely good people, Steve thinks, and then realizes with a rush of gratitude and joy that he’s about to join this family himself.

Of course, none of them know that yet.

“Let’s not tell them about us getting married just yet,” Bucky said this morning before they left the hospital. “It’s just gonna be a _lot_ as it is, and that’s so huge, and— Is that okay?” he asked nervously, and Steve smiled at him, and kissed his forehead.

“That’s perfectly okay,” he said against Bucky’s skin. And when he pulled back, Bucky looked at him so gratefully, Steve kissed his mouth, too.

So neither Steve nor Bucky jump on Becca’s announcement with a, ‘ _Hey, us too!’_ Which is also probably a good thing for the reason that Steve is pretty damn sure Bucky’s not the only sibling in his family who knows how to kill a person without them even noticing.

But the small, secret smile Bucky flashes Steve, when everyone else pipes up to start talking over each other again, lights a flame in Steve’s heart, spreading warmth through his body, and lighting him up inside.

Bucky’s family insists on having lunch all together, and Steve seems to be really getting along with them all, which makes Bucky happy to see, so he agrees. He’s already incredibly emotionally drained, and he’s feeling a little twitchy, which he shouldn’t be, based on the timing of his last doctor-supervised dose of buprenorphine. So he’s probably just exhausted, he reasons with himself. Exhausted emotionally, and exhausted physically, and pretty soon he’s going to need to go lie down. But he can’t bring himself to risk causing his mom, or dad, or auntie, or Shuri to make that sad, ‘ _Nooo, why aren’t you staaayyying?_ ’ face. So he doesn’t protest, and just agrees to have lunch with them all.

Somehow, Steve notices Bucky’s exhaustion when no one else does, and halfway through lunch, he places one warm hand on Bucky’s thigh. And then he gives him regular, comforting squeezes throughout the rest of the meal.

It’s wild watching his family interact with each other after more than five years of not seeing or speaking to them at all. Shuri and Becca have always been close, despite the eleven year age difference between them, but last time Bucky saw them both, Shuri was barely sixteen, and Becca was a few months shy of twenty-seven. Now, Becca is thirty-two, but Shuri is twenty-one, and the way they talk and joke and tease each other makes it deeply clear that their friendship has grown exponentially over the last few years.

Bucky tries hard not to wonder if that has anything to do with bonding over losing him again, this time because he chose to lose them. In part, because that feels incredibly cocky to suppose, and also because it makes him feel like absolute dogshit.

Steve squeezes his thigh again.

Lunch is long, and Bucky is starting to seriously flag when Steve finally says something that, by some utter _miracle_ , causes T’Challa to gracefully wrap up the meal. And then, suddenly, everyone is standing, and coming to give Bucky hugs, and kisses on his cheeks, and he’s being…released. They’re telling him to get some rest. No one is upset, or hurt, or angry.

Bucky is blinking, eyes wide, as most of his family filters out of the relatively small, private dining room they’ve taken their lunch in, waving at him and promising to see him soon. But when Steve takes his hand, and starts leading him out, too, he stops.

“Wait,” Bucky says, and turns back to T’Challa, the only person who hasn’t moved to leave the dining room yet.

T’Challa looks up at Bucky attentively. “Do you need something from me?” he asks mildly, in that tone of voice that sounds like nothing you could ask him would be too much.

Bucky glances back to make sure his family are all totally gone. Seeing that in fact they are, he shuts the door behind them before turning back to T’Challa again.

“Steve and I want to get married,” he says in a rush. T’Challa’s face instantly lights up in a smile that makes him look just like he used to when they were twelve, and used to catch tiny baby frogs by their favorite lake outside the city. “We want to do it as soon as we can, and I was wondering if you’d honor me, and officiate for us?”

Bucky didn’t check on this with Steve, but in fairness, he only got the idea during lunch, when he remembered that T’Challa is a _king_ , and can _do_ that. He quickly looks over to see if Steve is on board with this plan. Steve looks _delighted_.

Honestly, so does T’Challa. “Bucky,” he laughs, “you honor _me_ by asking. Of course I will marry you!”

T’Challa steps forward, and wraps his arms around both Bucky and, behind him, Steve, so that Bucky finds himself the filling of a Hot Beefy Guy sandwich.

Once he’s not being squeezed between a fuckton of muscles anymore, Bucky smiles at T’Challa. “Thank you,” he says sincerely. “But I don’t want to upstage Becca and Sipho, so would it be okay if we—if we kept this a secret for now?” He’s asking T’Challa, but more so, he’s asking Steve.

Thankfully, both are nodding.

“Totally okay, Buck,” Steve tells him. “We don’t have to tell them anything until you want to.”

“I do want to,” Bucky assures him. “But right now might not be the time. They just met you, and they just got me back for now, and Becca made it _very_ clear through lunch that they’re planning to have the wedding while we’re here, so I just—”

“Bucky,” Steve says gently, cutting off his babbling. “It’s fine, gorgeous. I promise it is.”

“You will need two witnesses,” T’Challa points out, “but other than them, we don’t need to tell anyone outside this room.”

“Okay,” Bucky breathes in relief. “Okay, thank you.”

T’Challa’s smile is warm and genuine, but Bucky didn’t miss the way his eyes flashed to him when he said they’d gotten him back ‘for now.’

Fuck. Bucky really is just going to disappoint them all over again, isn’t he?

Steve supports Bucky up to the room that T’Challa’s had prepared for them, because Bucky is tired enough now that he’s having trouble staying on his feet. Their bags are all there when they get inside. Someone must have moved them here from the hospital during lunch.

But when Steve searches through their belongings, he realizes his coat is missing. Not that he needs it here, so close to the equator as they are. And not that it’s much use to him anyway, since both of their coats lost a left sleeve to the blast that destroyed Bucky’s arm. But Steve doesn’t want to leave it for the hospital to have to deal with, and brushes off Bucky’s suggestion to just get it later, saying he could use a run (the absolute monster), and that he’ll be there and back in no time. Then he presses a kiss to Bucky’s forehead, and before Bucky can make fun of him for _wanting to go on a run in the middle of the day and right after lunch_ , he’s gone.

Bucky chuckles fondly to himself. He really does love that weirdo. So goddamn much, it _hurts_. In a really wonderful kind of way.

By his own logic, Bucky could definitely leave unpacking his suitcase until tomorrow, right?

Yes, he decides. So instead of opening his suitcase, he just kicks it gently across the floor and out of his way so he can fall into the bed with a flourish.

He ends up falling on top of his own ruined coat, strewn over the bed as it currently is, and when he lands, it’s with a harsh, “ _Oof!_ ”

Why is his coat _lumpy?_ He doesn’t remember it being lumpy. And not soft lumps, either. Hard, painful-to-fall-on _lumps_.

Bucky arches up to pull his coat out from under him, and then pats at the pockets, trying to see if he — or Steve, maybe — left something in them. But both pockets are completely empty, which Bucky confirms by sticking his hand inside them each when the pat method yields him no results.

That’s weird, Bucky thinks, squishing around the rest of the coat. Then where—?

Oh.

Bucky’s hand freezes when he finds the lump. It’s not in a pocket, it’s _inside the lining_. He flips the coat open and brings it closer to his face to inspect. Yup, right there. There’s a line in the seam where the stitches aren’t _quite_ uniform. It’s been cut open, and resewn.

Hydra, no doubt. Bucky didn’t feel anything in it coming out of the bunker they had him in, but he was dazed and out of it, and he had two other coats on underneath his own. In his hand, the lump doesn’t feel as firm. It’s malleable, almost like…fine sand, maybe?

Bucky reaches into the pocket of his jeans, and pulls out the folding knife he tends to keep on himself, flicking it open with his thumb and making quick work of slicing through the bastard seam. He’s careful not to cut the fabric itself, or widen the rip in the seam any more than whoever first made it did. Even though he belatedly realizes it makes no difference to a coat already ruined.

There’s a sense of dread pooling deep in his gut. And as he reaches inside the lining, and his fingers close around what is unmistakably a plastic, ziplock bag, that dread seeps through the rest of his body.

Breathing shallowly, already half knowing what he’s holding, Bucky pulls out the sandwich-sized ziplock, and looks down at a bag half filled with a fine, golden-brown powder.

Heroin.

🎈

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Listen, we all knew it wasn't JUST gonna be sunshine and roses and marriage proposals from here on out, right?
> 
> According to the internet, Sipho is a Xhosa word meaning 'gift,' and is pronounced "See-po."  
> 
> 
> **Next time:**   
> 


	20. Twenty: Mid-December

A few days pass by in quiet, restful peace. A feeling Steve hasn’t experienced since the first week of October — before the breakup, before he learned about Hydra, and the danger Bucky has been in for so long.

Bucky is still sleeping a lot, but his naps are becoming less frequent, and less necessary, and Steve takes heart in seeing that he really is healing. Under the supervision of his entire medical care team at the hospital, he’s already being slowly weaned off of the opioid replacements for the drugs Hydra forced on him (since the issue was not a relapse, but a kidnapping, his doctors are confident that once the withdrawal is taken care of, he’ll be fine without them), and by all accounts, he seems to be doing well.

He’s also getting to spend a lot of time with his family, both as a whole, and one-on-one. Most of the time, when Bucky kisses Steve on the temple, and heads off to spend some quality time with just one of his family members, it’s with his mom. He usually tells Steve at least parts of what they talked about when he comes back, but sometimes he keeps it to himself. And Steve is more than happy to let him have that — the privacy of things said between mother and son in secret, in confidence.

Sometimes, Bucky comes back from these talks energized, smiling widely and laughing, and telling Steve all about something his mom said that has him cackling. Other times, he returns reserved and withdrawn. Those times are usually because they discussed something that Bucky missed, or Winnifred asked about something that happened while Bucky was gone, or something else that Bucky doesn’t disclose when he gets home.

But no matter what he says or doesn’t say, and no matter what mood he’s in when he returns, Steve always kisses him, soft and sweet, and tells him how much he loves him. And Bucky smiles.

Starting the first Friday that Steve and Bucky are there, the day after Steve gets to meet them all, the Zimaevs gather around to light their family menorah, and sing the Hanukkah blessings. Bucky wears a yarmulke, and holds Steve’s hand.

On the third night of Hanukkah, after the blessings are sung and the candles are lit, Bucky takes off his own yarmulke, and laughs as he takes off Steve’s, too. He reaches up to ruffle his fingers through Steve’s hair, where it has no doubt been flattened by the head covering, and Steve can’t help but grin widely at the joy on his beautiful face.

While Bucky curls his fingers in Steve’s hair and pulls him in to press a soft kiss to his lips, Shuri, who joined them for the lighting tonight, walks over to them both.

“Bucky?” she asks softly.

Bucky turns to her, sliding his fingers out of Steve’s hair, and squeezing his shoulder before he takes his hand back fully. He raises his eyebrows attentively at Shuri.

“If you want,” Shuri tells him, “I have a new version of your prosthetic ready for a fitting.”

Bucky’s eyebrows shoot up in clear excitement. “You do?” he asks. “This quickly?”

Shuri actually rolls her eyes, and Bucky laughs again, loud and booming.

“Sorry,” he amends quickly, “I forgot who I was talking to.”

“Clearly,” Shuri says dryly, but the corners of her mouth twitch. “Come to my lab tomorrow afternoon? I’ll fit you for the new arm, and then we can discuss the final design.”

“Okay,” Bucky replies, a bright, happy grin lighting up his face. “Okay, yeah, I’ll come by in the afternoon tomorrow.”

Shuri smiles back at him, then looks at Steve. “You can come, too.”

“Oh—I can?” Steve stammers, slightly surprised at being addressed at all.

Shuri laughs at him, and nods.

“She just wants to show off,” Bucky tells Steve, teasingly hip checking Shuri. “You’re the only one here who hasn’t seen her lab yet.”

Shuri cuts a glare at Bucky, but he just giggles in reply, so she throws her hands up in exasperation. “Well, I’m not wrong!” she cries. “I am _very_ impressive!”

Steve loves watching Bucky cackle like this.

“You are!” Bucky agrees as Shuri continues to glare at him. “Don’t worry, I’m sure you’ll blow Steve’s mind.”

“You already did, the first time I saw this one’s arm,” Steve points out, nodding toward Bucky, and Shuri looks pleased.

She nods decisively. “Good. Tomorrow afternoon, then.”

And with that, she turns on her heel, and marches off to apparently go make fun of Sipho, whose responding laugh is booming and contagious.

Bucky, still easily worn out as his body continues to heal, gets sleepy pretty shortly after their conversation with Shuri. He starts leaning his head heavily on Steve’s shoulder, which, Steve has learned, is the cue to excuse them both from the family festivities, and take Bucky up to their room to bed. Before it becomes necessary for Steve to actually pick Bucky up, and _carry_ him up the stairs.

Although, to be honest, Steve kind of really enjoys carrying Bucky around, so that’s not the _worst_ problem to have. But no, Bucky needs to sleep, and Steve is more than capable of saying a gracious goodnight for them both so they can leave.

They’ve just left the cozy sitting room, and Bucky’s family, when a voice calls both of their names. Steve turns over his shoulder to see T’Challa walking toward them, and Bucky blinks adorably to try to rouse himself a little.

“Hey, T’Challa,” Steve says in greeting. It still feels very weird to address the ruler of an entire nation by his first name with no titles attached, but said monarch keeps insisting, and Steve has gotten a little tired of blushing because Shuri and Becca make fun of him every time he slips up and says, ‘your majesty’, so just ‘T’Challa’ it is.

“What’s up?” Bucky asks said monarch, trying valiantly to stifle a yawn, and then failing miserably. Which is just _beyond_ endearing.

T’Challa grins as he reaches them, like maybe he found that endearing, too. “I wanted to ask,” he begins in a low, secretive voice to them both, “if you’ve decided on your witnesses yet? It seems I’ll have some free time this Thursday, four days from today, so if you’re ready, we can perform your ceremony then.”

Bucky’s smile at this news is bright like starshine, and it warms Steve’s heart with its glow. He looks over at Steve with a question in his eyes, like Steve wasn’t the one who originally suggested getting married as soon as they could. Like Steve wasn’t the one who _proposed_.

“Can’t come soon enough,” he replies to T’Challa, but he’s grinning at Bucky. Bucky’s eyes crinkle sweetly in happiness, and Steve doesn’t care that T’Challa is standing right there. He sweeps Bucky into his arms, and kisses him soundly.

When they walk down the spiral ramp into Shuri’s lab the next afternoon, Steve stops in his tracks and _gapes_. Bucky laughs, but he doesn’t blame Steve for his reaction. Shuri’s lab is absolutely insane, with its natural walls and bright white counters, its tall windows, looking out into a cavernous spectacle of vibranium mines and technology, and its multitudes of lit-up screens. The space doesn’t look sterile or boring at all, like many American labs. It’s alive with art and light, and the inventions dotted around the large, spacious room are astounding.

“I wasn’t exaggerating when I said she was gonna blow your mind,” Bucky tells Steve proudly.

“I didn’t think you were,” Steve replies weakly, still looking around in wonder. “Has it _always_ been this mind-blowing?”

“Pretty much,” Bucky confirms, looking around for Shuri. “It’s gotten cooler since I last saw it, but I pretty much expected that.”

“Of _course_ it’s gotten cooler!” Shuri exclaims, appearing out of nowhere to come hug Bucky in greeting. “Are you ready for your new, upgraded arm?”

“So ready,” Bucky tells her, grinning. “Where do you want me?”

“Sit,” Shuri instructs, pointing him to a chair next to her primary workstation, and Bucky obeys. “So,” she begins, taking her seat to his left, and starting to remove the cloth cover of the filed-down metal stump where his old prosthesis used to be, “you haven’t had an upgrade in a while, which means this one might take a little getting used to.”

“Does it have to?” Bucky asks. He really _liked_ his old prosthesis. It was Shuri’s third model, and it felt the most like a natural arm of all of them.

But Shuri looks up from measuring the vibranium stump to give him an unamused look at his lack of faith in her, and bluntly says, “Yes.”

Then, more reassuringly, “Don’t worry, though, it should be an easy learning curve. I’ve designed it to feel even more natural than the last one, and to be more responsive to your brainwaves. _However_ ,” she adds, looking extremely pleased with herself, “I’ve developed a new system that, while being more responsive to your commands, and just as sensitive to touch as the last one, should _never_ hurt, even if this one gets blown off, too.”

Steve turns around from where he’s been fascinatedly examining a piece of tech as Bucky’s eyebrows furrow.

“How does that work?” he asks.

Shuri doesn’t appreciate skepticism of her skills, but she is gracious about entertaining Bucky’s questions in regards to a technology that gets implanted in his shoulder and his brain, so she doesn’t glare at him this time as she answers, “You wouldn’t understand if I tried to explain it to you, so just trust me when I say that I’ve figured out how to _make_ it work, okay?”

Bucky laughs. Shuri has always had a natural ability to ease his worries like this. “Okay,” he agrees, “I trust you.”

Shuri nods, pleased, and goes back to measuring the remains of his old prosthesis and his natural shoulder.

“Do you have any idea why they blew off his other arm?” Steve’s voice comes from across the lab. Shuri looks up at him as he walks over. “I mean, that sniper could easily have just killed us both instead, but he very specifically went for the arm, and left Bucky and I otherwise unharmed.”

“Actually,” Shuri responds, finished with measuring, and turning to her computer, “I do have an idea.”

She taps her screen a few times, and a projection of Bucky’s old arm appears over it. Steve’s eyes widen again, impressed at the projection, but he stays quiet as Shuri begins to explain.

“I think Hydra may have been using your arm to track where you were,” she starts, but Bucky can’t help but stop her right there.

“Shuri, what the fuck?” he demands before he can stop himself. “Are you telling me you put some sort of _tracking device—?!_ ”

“No, of course not!” Shuri interrupts him right back, waving her hand at the ridiculousness of that idea. “But last time you were here, you asked me to make it possible to do small fixes remotely, remember? So you wouldn’t have to come back for minor maintenance?”

Bucky can tell she’s being careful with her tone to not seem angry or accusatory toward him, but he _knows_ she must be masking real feelings there. He did ask for that, and she gave it to him, and then he went back to New York, and didn’t speak to her, or anyone else here again for only a few months short of six years. There’s no way she wasn’t hurt by that — no way she doesn’t see that as at least something of a betrayal. Because it was, that’s exactly what it was.

But she doesn’t acknowledge any of that, so Bucky doesn’t either, following her lead.

“Yeah,” he replies instead, “I remember.”

“Well,” Shuri continues painstakingly, “in order for that to work, that model had to let off a low-level frequency that should have been undetectable by most technologies. However, if, theoretically, someone had the schematics, they wouldn’t be able to _track_ your movements, but they _might_ be able to set up a system that would alert them if you came within a radius of, say, fifty kilometers or so.”

“So if they were sitting outside of Toronto,” Steve concludes, “they’d know when we got there.”

Shuri nods, but Bucky’s shaking his head.

“No,” he mutters, “Steve— _Rumlow was there_. They wouldn’t have sent him somewhere just to _sit_ and _hope_ we decided to leave the country that way. They’d’ve wanted _him_ , specifically, to find me and bring me back. That’s meant to be his job as my handler, after all, and they knew it would be the best way to torture me.”

“I don’t know, honey,” Steve murmurs, laying a heavy hand on Bucky’s right shoulder, and squeezing, “he could have been in New York, still. Could have left for Toronto as soon as they got the signal we were there.”

That still doesn’t make sense to Bucky. It was all too perfect and neat for them to have just been guessing. Hydra doesn’t guess, and Hydra _doesn’t_ improvise. Everything is planned, down to the letter. But Bucky’s brain is struggling too much to process all of this to be able to articulate any of that, and Shuri is speaking again.

“No one should have had those capabilities, though,” she’s telling them both as she types something at her computer. “Least of all those Hydra shitbags.”

“But?” Bucky prompts.

“ _But_ ,” Shuri continues, shifting the projection so the top plates of the arm disappear, and the inside is visible, a neat column of wires connected to Shuri’s state-of-the-art sensor technology, a few points of which — presumably the frequency points — are pulsing in blue, “when T’Challa told me how they targeted your arm, I thought that the only way that makes any sense at _all_ is if they were trying to hide something.”

Bucky pales. An image flashes in his mind of lying down, looking up at the ceiling of that fucking bunker they had him in, masked faces blurring in and out of focus, and a sharp pressure in his left arm. He’d thought it was a dream. But maybe—

“They were tampering with it,” he realizes out loud.

Shuri nods grimly. “I think so,” she agrees, tapping her screen again. The projection shifts into a long string of ones and zeros — binary code.

“I’m not stupid,” Shuri says, “all of my files are encrypted to the Djalia and back, and everything relating to your prosthetic is also in an unbreakable code. So the only way they could have known about it is if someone got their filthy colonizer hands on _this_ , as well as _this—_ ” she shifts the projection again to what Bucky suspects is a cipher, though even his well-trained eyes can’t decipher it enough to even recognize it as such without context clues, “— _and_ my own personal notes, which I keep locked up. There is _only_ a single, physical copy of those, they could not have been acquired through a hack.”

A jolt shoots through Bucky. Without being conscious of moving, suddenly he’s on his feet.

“You have a plant,” he bites out, the urge to run, and never stop running, overwhelming him. He’s only held back by Steve’s hand on his shoulder, and Shuri’s lightly on his side, over his still-bruised ribs.

“ _Had_ ,” Shuri is telling him firmly, looking arrestingly into his eyes. “We _had_ a plant, Bucky, they are not here anymore.”

Bucky’s breathing is too fast, too jerky, he can’t speak. But Steve asks the question blaring through his mind.

“How do you know they’re gone?” he asks Shuri softly. Bucky is, once again, inexpressibly grateful to him.

Both of Shuri’s hands come to rest on Bucky’s shoulders as Steve’s move to Bucky’s waist, as though choreographed to make room for her. Bucky’s caged in by people who love him; Steve right at his back, pressed against him, supporting him, and Shuri in front of him, holding his gaze as she addresses him directly, even though Steve was the one who actually vocalized the question.

“There was a man in my lab a few months ago,” she says, slowly and clearly, deliberately breaking through the white noise that’s risen up in Bucky’s ears. “I thought he was trustworthy at first, but as I spent more time with him, I didn’t like the feeling he gave me. One night, I found him in here after hours, when no one is supposed to be here. I fired him then, and a few weeks later he said he was moving to one of the outer villages. That was in October. I did a check of the lab then, but I couldn’t find any evidence that anything had been stolen, or tampered with. When I realized Hydra had probably tampered with your arm, and weaponized the tech we use to cut vibranium into that cannon that blew it off, I knew that they’d probably gotten hold of my files on it, and my notes. I asked the War Dogs to find the thief. Turns out, he never went to that outer village. He found a way to sneak out of Wakanda without us knowing, and left in October. He’s gone.”

“But there would be others,” Bucky gasps, his heart racing, pounding against his ribs. “Other plants, other Hydra agents—”

“Not here,” Shuri assures him. “Since T’Challa sent Okoye and Nakia to bring you here, we’ve downsized to only trusted, long-term associates, here in the lab, and in the palace, and you are being looked after by War Dogs wherever you go.”

“I know _that_ ,” Bucky tells her, even though Steve makes a soft, surprised sound in his ear. But Bucky’s been well aware of the War Dogs following them, and keeping watch, since they landed. There were a few in the hospital, dressed as staff, a whole group flanking them on their walk to the palace, and he’s clocked at least twelve different War Dogs at different times throughout their stay inside the palace.

Shuri’s hands leave Bucky’s shoulders to cradle his face. “You are safe here, White Wolf,” she murmurs, using the nickname she gave him when she was eleven, when he moved back to Wakanda after losing his arm, and they first became close like siblings. “I promise. I know you weren’t, once, but you are now. Okoye, Nakia, T’Challa, and I are making absolutely _sure_ of it.”

Bucky takes a deep, shuddering breath, and, finally, nods.

While Steve is, at Shuri’s suggestion, guiding Bucky to sit back down, Becca’s voice sounds out from the entrance ramp around the corner. Bucky doesn’t hear what she’s saying, just that it’s his little sister’s voice, but when she rounds the corner and catches sight of him, the smile falls from her face, and she rushes to him.

Suddenly, her cool hands are on his face, one on his cheek and the other on his forehead, and she’s at his eye level, peering into his eyes, her eyebrows furrowed in concern.

“Jamie,” she’s saying — another nickname, the one he was most widely known by before his entire life changed forever. The one that still slips out when she’s drunk, or tired, or feeling vulnerable and raw. “Jamie, are you okay? What happened?”

The second question is addressed to Shuri and Steve when Bucky doesn’t readily respond to the first.

“I told him about the theft,” Shuri says simply. And Becca must know the details already, because understanding dawns over her face, and she nods.

She turns back to Bucky and looks him directly in his eyes, saying clearly, “Jamie, we have set up _so_ many safety protocols to keep you safe here, okay? I can’t even tell you how many, because it’s above your clearance level.”

Bucky squints at his sister. _What the fuck?_

“Oh,” Becca says, wincing. Bucky realizes he must have said that out loud. “Right. You don’t know about that yet.”

“Know about what?” Bucky demands. There’s way too much going on right now, and he feels like he’s swimming in it all, unmoored. Maybe sensing exactly this, Steve’s hand lands on his shoulder again — an anchor.

Becca looks up at Shuri, who shrugs.

“Bex, for fuck’s sake,” Bucky snaps, “tell me!”

“You can’t tell Ma,” Becca warns. “Or Dad, okay? They don’t know, and it’s confidential. I only wanted to tell you because—well, because you’re my big brother, and I tell you everything.”

_Used to, anyway,_ Bucky thinks, but Becca isn’t finished.

“And also because it directly affects you.” She takes a breath, straightens her back and sets her shoulders, steeling herself, and then says, “I’ve been working with central intelligence for the last three years.”

Bucky blinks. “You’re a War Dog?”

“Not exactly,” Becca replies. “I’m more administrative than that. I don’t do missions — I can’t really leave the country, after all, and certainly not subtly. But I work here; I set plans, I’m a point of contact, other stuff that I’m legally not allowed to tell you.” She smiles crookedly. “Proud of me?”

Bucky looks up at her, nonplussed. “Fuck, Bex,” he breathes. “Yeah, of _course_ I’m proud of you.”

Becca’s grin is huge. Like she really wanted _Bucky_ , her absolute mess of an older brother, to be proud of _her_.

She’s got it all backwards. _Bucky’s_ the one who would do anything in the world to make his hilarious, badass, amazing little sister proud of _him_.

Someday, maybe.

Becca sticks around, and chats with him while Shuri finishes adjusting the specs of his new arm model, just prattling on and making all three of them laugh as easy as anything. Bucky knows she’s doing it on purpose, calming him down with casual humor, until he’s not so close to the edge of a panic attack anymore, but nothing in her body language or voice betrays worry or concern.

He wonders how much Becca has learned to conceal since he was taken away from her.

She falls quiet — but rests one foot nonchalantly against the side of Bucky’s to create a comforting physical link between them — when Shuri needs the floor again to ask Bucky a lot of very specific questions about the good and bad of the last model, his day-to-day functions, what he needs from the new one, his dream wish-list for it, and what input he has for the aesthetic design.

By the time Shuri’s finished, Bucky is wiped out, and ready to go be _anywhere_ but here. But as he’s starting to say goodbye to Shuri and Becca, trying not the let it show how badly he wants to leave right now, Steve stops him.

“What?” Bucky asks dumbly when Steve touches his elbow and lifts his eyebrows meaningfully.

Steve smiles. “You wanted to ask them something?” he prompts as Bucky just blinks owlishly at him. “Thought now might be a good time.”

Oh. _Oh!_ Right.

Bucky turns back to Becca and Shuri, who are both looking at him expectantly.

“I wanted to ask you both a favor,” he says.

Shuri raises her eyebrows, and Becca crosses her arms.

“Depends on what it is,” Becca tells him suspiciously, but he catches the way her mouth twitches.

Bucky makes a sardonic face at her. “Har har,” he says dryly. But then, because he can’t help it when he thinks about this, he smiles.

“We don’t want to steal your thunder, Bex,” Bucky says sincerely, and just that little hint has both women perking up, no doubt already figuring out what Bucky is about to say. “God knows, you’ve waited long enough. But, um—Steve and I are gonna get married.”

He’s stymied, for a moment, from finishing his full thought, because Becca and Shuri both gasp, and then _scream_. Their high-pitched squeals bounce around the lab’s stone walls in a piercing harmony. Suddenly, Bucky is being hugged from both sides, and then, just as quickly, abandoned so they can jump on Steve, too.

Steve looks a bit stunned, albeit very pleased, when Becca and Shuri release him.

“When?” Shuri asks them both excitedly.

“In three days,” Steve answers, and four hands fly up to cover two open mouths.

“That’s so soon!” Becca protests.

“We’re keeping it secret,” Bucky tells her. And then, because she makes a _deeply_ unimpressed face at him at that, he laughs and says, “ _Your_ wedding is the big news of the hour, Bex, not mine. Steve and I want to be married, but no one outside of the four of us and T’Challa need to know about it, not just yet.”

“But you _will_ tell our parents eventually, yes?” Becca presses.

Bucky rolls his eyes. “Of _course_ we’re gonna tell them eventually,” he says. But, to be fair, Bucky hasn’t exactly been good at keeping his family informed lately. So maybe it’s not such an absurd question. “We will,” he repeats, more gently. More honestly.

“We did want to ask….” Steve begins, trying valiantly to steer them back on course and prompt Bucky to ask them the question they have for them.

“Ah, yes,” Shuri agrees, “what’s this favor you want from us?”

Bucky laughs. Steve’s hand finds his, lacing their fingers together.

“We need two witnesses,” Bucky says, cutting to the point at last. “We hoped you two would honor us.”

And from the way Shuri whoops loudly, and Becca bursts into happy tears, Bucky feels confident in assuming both of their answers are a resounding ‘yes.’

By the time Steve and Bucky are climbing back in the little shuttle jet to go back into the city and to the palace, Bucky is feeling low and drained. Getting solid plans in place to marry the man of his dreams is a _happy_ thing, but he’s slipping. Everyone is working so hard to keep him safe, and even though he knows it’s because they all love him, and they’re doing this for him because they _want_ him to be safe, he can’t manage to quiet the voice in his head that keeps telling him he’s eternally cursed to be a burden to everyone he loves.

Even Steve, who has told him many times now that he’s choosing this life, because he’s choosing to be with him. But Bucky knows that as long as he lives, Hydra will be looking for him. Steve may have made his choice, but that choice is going to force him into running and hiding for his whole life. Even just being here in Wakanda is putting Bucky’s entire family — the entire _country_ , maybe — in danger.

“Do you mind if we take a detour?” Bucky hears himself ask as he sits down in the pilot’s seat.

Steve looks over at him from the seat beside him. “Not at all,” he says. “You have somewhere you want to go?”

Bucky nods, but doesn’t explain any further. He’s lost in thought, and in his feelings, and there’s only one place he really wants to be right now.

The sun is beginning to set, casting the lake in a shining, glittering light, when they disembark from the shuttle jet and walk, hand in hand, up to one of Bucky’s favorite spots in the whole wide world.

Steve’s face is lit in golden light, his hair gilt and glowing, as he looks out, smiling softly, over the lake. And then he turns that soft smile to Bucky, those blue eyes lit up like lanterns, and squeezes his hand.

“It’s beautiful,” he breathes. “Thank you for bringing me here.”

Bucky lets out a short, dry laugh. “You’re welcome,” he says. “But I wanted to come here for selfish reasons, I’m afraid.”

Steve cocks his head in question, but waits for Bucky to explain, rather than asking him to. Giving him an out in case he doesn’t want to.

Bucky stifles a sigh, though. This, at least, he can articulate.

“T’Challa and I used to come out here when we were kids,” he explains. “It was a quiet place where our moms could chat while we went swimming. And then when we were a little older, it was where we’d come by ourselves, to tell each other that secret shit you don’t want your parents to know about when you’re a kid. Crushes, feelings, that sort of stuff. We were sitting on a blanket right there,” he says, pointing to a spot a few meters to their right, “when I first told him I liked boys just as much as I liked girls. He was the first person I ever came out to.”

Steve smiles. “How’d he react?”

“He asked me if I thought M’Baku was hot,” Bucky laughs, remembering the moment fondly.

Steve laughs with him. “What did you say?”

“I said, ‘Duh!’” Bucky replies, grinning. “You haven’t met M’Baku, but he’s always been very blessed in the looks category.”

Steve nods appreciatively. “You wanted to come here because it’s a happy place for you?” he asks.

Bucky considers this. “Yeah, kind of,” he says eventually. “Happy, yes, but also just…safe. Sometimes when we’d come out here, it was so that we could cry over our broken hearts. Like when Lindiwe told T’Challa she liked N’kosana more than she liked him. Or when M’Baku and I finally kissed when I was fourteen, and he decided he didn’t like boys after all. It was where we came when we needed to be somewhere safe. Like the lake would keep our secrets, too.”

Steve’s thumb brushes over Bucky’s knuckles. But before Steve can ask anything else — before Bucky ends up spilling all of his current secrets out into Steve’s eyes, just as blue and welcoming as the lake Bucky confided in growing up — he turns to Steve and smiles, false though it may be.

“Can we watch the sunset here?” he asks.

Steve grins back at him. “I’d love that.”

They don’t have a blanket, but they sit anyway, quietly settling together on the grassy shore. Steve loops his arm around Bucky’s back, holding him by the waist, and Bucky fits perfectly into his side like he was always meant to be there.

They don’t speak for a long while. They just sit beside each other, watching the sun sink down in the sky over the sparkling water.

The light around them has turned from golden to pink before Steve looks over at Bucky and sees the tears rolling down his face.

“Honey, what’s wrong?” Steve asks at once, the hand that’s been resting on Bucky’s waist starting to rub his back instead. “Are you okay?”

Bucky sniffs. No, he’s not okay. He hasn’t been okay for a while, he thinks.

But he doesn’t say that. He can’t. What he says instead is, “We don’t have to do this, you know. I wouldn’t be upset if you changed your mind.”

Bucky isn’t meeting Steve’s eyes, still gazing out over the water, but he can see Steve’s frown in his peripheral vision.

“Do what?” Steve asks. There’s a hard edge in his voice. His eyebrows raise. “Get married?”

Bucky doesn’t answer. But that’s answer enough.

“Do you not want to?” Steve asks him gently, still rubbing his back. He’s too understanding. Too good. Bucky has _never_ deserved him.

Bucky wets his lips, trying to weigh his words. Steve would do anything for him, he knows, but Steve needs to think about _himself_ , right now, not Bucky.

“I want you to do what’s best for you,” he ends up saying eventually. He hasn’t turned to look at Steve once since they started speaking, and he sure as hell doesn’t now. “I want you to think about what your life is going to look like if you tie yourself to me.”

“Bucky,” Steve says, his voice low and firm, but Bucky still doesn’t look at him. His hand stops rubbing Bucky’s back, but it doesn’t leave him. Stays there, warm and comforting, even though Steve knows Bucky is trying to let him end things if that will be better, in the long run, for Steve. “Buck, I already told you that I want this. I’ve thought about it a _lot_ , sweetheart, I know what my life is gonna look like. It’s gonna look like _you_. It’s gonna be _happy_ , because I’ll be with you.”

Bucky closes his eyes. He shakes his head. “Steve,” he whispers, barely stopping himself from soughing out _Stevie_ instead.

“Bucky,” Steve says back. Low and firm.

But, “ _Steve_ ,” Bucky presses, opening his eyes, and finally turning to look at this man he loves so exceptionally much. He told Steve, weeks ago now, a lifetime ago, that he wasn’t going to push him away again. That he didn’t have the willpower. And that’s still true. But if it’s about _Steve,_ and his happiness, Bucky can summon whatever willpower he needs.

“Steve, you need to _really_ think about this,” Bucky tells him, trying like hell to ignore the hurt and anger brewing like a storm in Steve’s eyes. Trying like hell to ignore the sharp ache in his chest. “I love you. I want you.” Bucky’s voice breaks at the confession. “But I can’t give you stability, or safety, or _anything_ like that. Life with me is going to be a constant struggle. We’ll have to be ready to uproot our entire lives, at any moment. We’ll have to leave friends, never speak to them again, possibly. We couldn’t have kids. Ever. Relationships can’t survive if the only thing we have is each other. I’ve tried that before, remember? My relationship with Nat didn’t survive it, and it was because _all_ we had was each other. That’s too much to put on another person, Steve.”

“Do you think I’m putting that on you?” Steve asks softly, the anger dissipating, and giving way to concern. He reaches out and brushes a lock of hair behind Bucky’s ear, but Bucky shakes his head, pulling away from Steve’s hand, unable to bear its tender touch, and looking out at the lake again.

“I think you think too much of me,” he admits quietly, eyes on the darkening water. “You’re always telling me that I’m worth it. That I’m perfect? I’m not _perfect_ , Steve, I’m deeply, _deeply_ fucked up. I’m a fucking _mess_ , I just do a pretty good job of hiding it. But you _need_ to see that before you go and chain yourself to me for the rest of your life.”

Steve is quiet for a long time. So long, in fact, that Bucky finally caves, and looks at him again.

He’s staring down at the grass in front of him, his eyebrows knit together darkly. When Bucky looks at him, he turns his head to look at Bucky, too, and there’s something like anger back in his eyes. But it’s not directed at Bucky. It’s like fiery, righteous fury. It’s the same look he had on his face when he came charging into that bunker, when he shot Rollins in the head, and saved Bucky’s entire life.

After a long moment holding his gaze, Steve says, softly and dangerously, “Bucky, you need to stop thinking of this as me being chained to you, like you’re some kind of fucking _burden_ , okay? You are not a burden, Buck. You’re the best thing in my life.”

The fire flares in Steve’s eyes as he leans in closer to Bucky’s face, holding him there with the intensity in his gaze. “I know you’re not perfect,” he murmurs. “Neither am I. But you’re perfect for _me_. I wanted you that first moment I saw you, baby. Now that I know you, I want you even _more_. Maybe you are a mess — I don’t think you are, but if you are, that’s okay. I’m my own special kind of mess, and you love me. You want to be with me _._ ”

“It’s not the same—”

“Yes, it is,” Steve insists, his commanding tone leaving absolutely no room for argument. “I don’t want you because I think you’re perfectly put together, Buck. I want you because I _know_ who you are, and I am _so_ _in awe_ of you every day. You’re so fucking strong, and you’re _brave_ , and _kind_ , and someone who’s been through what you have would have every right to be angry — to be selfish — but you’re not. All of your pain, everything that’s been done to you, and you’re just so kind.” He takes Bucky by the chin, and holds him there. “You are _extraordinary_ , my love. You are what I want. Nothing else. Just you.”

Bucky doesn’t look away. He blinks, and another tear spills out of each of his eyes. Steve’s hand softens on his chin, and his thumb brushes away one of those tears.

After a moment, Steve sighs gently, and when he leans in to softly press his lips to Bucky’s, Bucky doesn’t pull away.

Wrapping his arms all the way around Bucky, Steve holds him close. Bucky clings to his back, and presses his face into Steve’s shoulder, finally letting it all the way out, crying in earnest into his warmth. Steve holds him through it, turning to kiss his hair, his face, murmuring soft comforts.

By the time Bucky’s cried himself out a few minutes later, and pulls back, a little reluctantly, to take a shaking breath, the sun has slipped below the horizon. In the dim, grey-blue light, Steve searches his face.

“I’m okay,” Bucky assures him, though it may not be entirely true.

Steve doesn’t look entirely convinced, either, but he nods, and stands, holding out a hand to help Bucky up, too.

“Let’s get back,” he whispers kindly, and smiles.

But as Bucky turns to go walk back to the shuttle jet and fly back to the palace, Steve’s hand in his stops him, pulling gently until Bucky looks back at him again.

That fire is still in his eyes, Bucky sees, as Steve draws him slowly back into his arms, releasing Bucky’s hand to card both of his into Bucky’s hair, and hold onto his head.

“I know you want me to be happy,” Steve tells him, quiet, but clear. “I know you’re afraid you won’t be that for me. But you can’t decide for me what I think is worth it. _I_ get to make that choice. And it’s you, baby. You’re worth it _all_.”

And then, before Bucky can say a single word, Steve pulls him gently in with his hands on Bucky’s head, and kisses him again. Deep, and aching. Like if he can’t convince Bucky with his words, he’ll convince him with his lips and his tongue.

And as Steve kisses him there, with all the fire he contains, on the shore of Bucky’s lake, Bucky thinks that maybe, if they’re lucky, he can.

🎈

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **Next time:**   
> 


	21. Twenty-One: December 15th

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I almost cried writing AND editing this chapter, I hope you guys enjoy! ❤️
> 
> **Warning:** Bucky experiences some self-hating thoughts regarding his addiction near the end of this chapter. Addiction is a medical condition, surrounded by a huge amount of shame and stigma. Bucky's feelings do not reflect reality, or the author's opinion. Additionally, If you make comments shaming people dealing with addiction, I'm gonna delete them, and be very disappointed in you. Just so we're clear.

Steve is shocked when Shuri tells them that Bucky’s arm is ready only the next day, but Bucky isn’t. He was fully prepared for the likelihood that it’d be ready this quickly, and also for the other thing that nearly bowls Steve over:

“A _day?!_ ” Steve cries after Shuri informs him of Bucky’s projected recovery time.

Shuri, helpfully, just cackles and walks away, so Steve looks down at Bucky where he’s reclined on the surgical bed. Bucky smiles and shrugs, squeezing Steve’s hand in his.

“The surgical methods here are extremely non-invasive,” he explains simply.

This is an entirely new arm and shoulder, with new sensors and everything, so they’re going to have to remove the rest of the vibranium that makes up his current shoulder, and connects to his collarbone. Anywhere else in the world, this would be a gruesome, invasive procedure, and Bucky would be in pain for _days_ afterwards. And _then_ , he’d probably need a few weeks of physical therapy before he was back to full function.

But here, between the vibranium and the healing Kimoyo technology they’ve developed, even a procedure this intense will only require a day of mild painkillers and sleep, and Bucky should be good as new.

And that is, in fact, exactly how it goes. After napping on and off for the entire day after his early-morning surgery, only waking up to eat, take another few Advil, and be softly kissed by his sweet fiancé, Bucky wakes up just after midday on Wednesday, feeling better than he has the entire time they’ve been in Wakanda.

“How’s it feel?” Steve asks him that evening, while Bucky is playing with his new arm’s range of motion.

Bucky looks up at Steve, who’s been watching him from the edge of the bed with a soft smile in his eyes, and smiles right back at him. “Really good,” he admits excitedly. “Shuri said it might take some getting used to how it moves, but honestly, it feels _great_. I didn’t even realize until now that the last one still had some clunkiness that I must have been making up for unconsciously, because this feels so _smooth_.”

Steve grins as Bucky laughs. Clearly loves to see him happy like this. Bucky thinks wildly that it might be Steve’s favorite thing in the world, watching Bucky laugh. God, the _idea_ of that.

“It’s like when you get a new contacts prescription,” Bucky continues gleefully, “and you look around, and suddenly you can see all the individual leaves on the trees. And you didn’t even realize before that you were seeing trees as these green monoliths, but now it’s like you can see in HD.” He giggles at himself, knows exactly how silly he sounds, and doesn’t care. “You don’t know what I’m talking about, but that’s how it feels.”

Steve makes a jokingly offended face, and says, “I’ll have you know that I know _exactly_ what you’re talking about.”

“What do you mean?” Bucky asks, still grinning as he crosses the room to sit on the bed next to Steve. He reaches up with his new, beautiful arm, that he already _loves_ , and brushes his thumb over one of Steve’s thick eyebrows, feeling all the individual hairs there. “Your vision is _perfect_ , mister.”

“ _Now_ it is,” Steve argues, “because I got corrective eye surgery when I was twenty-three. Before that, I was almost legally blind.”

Bucky pulls back to gape at him. “Really?” he asks incredulously. He didn’t know that.

Steve nods. “Except for the fact that my vision could be _mostly_ corrected by eyeglasses and contacts. But I was in the range for it if that hadn’t been the case. _And_ I had an astigmatism.”

Bucky shakes his head fondly. “The more I hear about how you were when you were young, the more I realize what a pathetic kid you must have been,” he teases.

Steve’s mouth drops open. “How dare you!” he laughs. “I was a _very intimidating_ five-foot-four asthmatic!”

Bucky laughs with him, and goes to shove playfully at his shoulder, but Steve catches his new hand in mid-air. Brings it to his mouth, turning it sideways. He presses a very soft, hot, slow kiss right in the center of Bucky’s sensitive vibranium palm.

And as Bucky watches him linger there, Steve’s eyes lift to meet his. And Bucky’s helpless to suppress the shiver that runs through him at the look in those eyes.

Steve presses another two or three kisses to Bucky’s soft, cool palm, caressing it with his lips, and reveling in how it feels against his mouth.

He nuzzles his nose against that palm, then turns Bucky’s hand over, and kisses the inside of his wrist, too, smiling when that makes Bucky huff out a quiet sigh. The sum of its parts might all be interconnected metal plates, but Steve knows that this arm is just as much a part of Bucky as his natural one is. He’s always been amazed at how much it _feels_ like a natural arm, too. Not just a metal prosthetic, but soft like skin. It moves so gracefully, so intricately, so naturally, that if it weren’t for the way it’s almost always a few varying degrees cooler than Bucky’s right arm, eyes closed, Steve would forget Bucky’s hands don’t match.

But they don’t match, and Steve _loves_ that. He slowly kisses his way up the inside of Bucky’s forearm, savoring the taste and touch of this new but familiar part of the man he loves with his entire being.

Steve loves every part of Bucky. Loves his mismatched arms, loves him when he only has one arm, loves his scars, and his curls, and his dimples. The way his eyes crinkle and his nose scrunches when he’s purely, genuinely happy. The cleft in his chin, the crease between his eyebrows. The jut of his hip bones, his iliac crest, the dimples in his back. His round ass. His thick thighs. Steve wouldn’t change a thing about this man. And if anything about his body ever _does_ change, Steve will love that, too. He knows he will, because he loves _Bucky_. Loves him in his entirety.

Steve licks the inside of Bucky’s elbow, and Bucky hisses a short, breathy laugh, twitching away from Steve just a little — just enough to betray the ticklishness in this arm. Steve grins, filing that thought away for later as he continues steadily kissing his way up Bucky’s bicep, to his shoulder, across his collarbone, metal giving way to flesh. Steve’s mouth keeps going, sucking on the curve where Bucky’s shoulder meets his neck, scraping his teeth over his perfect throat, his jaw, and then, _finally,_ sealing their lips together.

Bucky, who has kept himself mostly silent thus far, aside from his hitched breaths and occasional quiet squeaks, whines in the back of his throat when Steve kisses him and reaches up to cradle the side of his neck. Keep Bucky right here, right where Steve can worship him.

Both of Bucky’s hands clutch at the back of Steve’s shirt, before the left one reaches up higher, and holds onto the back of Steve’s neck instead, keeping him right here, too.

Steve smiles into their kiss. He can’t believe how fucking _lucky_ he is that he went to that bar on the last night in July. That Bucky was there. That they found each other, and kissed each other, and that they’re _here_ now, about to pledge their lives to each other. Fate, luck—whatever it was that brought them together, Steve is so _fucking_ glad it did.

Slowly, he pushes forward, laying Bucky down on the bed, climbing on top of him. Bucky pulls his legs up so Steve is lying in between them, his favorite place to be, still just kissing Bucky breathless, running his hands through those gorgeous curls of his.

Bucky moves with him when Steve sits up and back to pull Bucky’s shirt off, and then his jeans and boxer briefs off, too. In the process, Bucky manages to pull Steve’s t-shirt off as well, and Steve shucks off his own pants and underwear, too impatient about going back to venerating Bucky’s body to bother with staying clothed the way he likes to sometimes when he has Bucky naked and splayed out just for him.

They had sex this morning — a quick and desperate thing when Bucky woke up hard and horny. Steve was all too happy to oblige him when Bucky sleepily ground against his hip and begged Steve to fuck him, so Bucky is still a little loose and open. Steve could just hold him down like this and slide right into him, no prep necessary. And Bucky would let him. Would choke out those little gut-punched noises he makes when he’s needy and yearning for it.

But Steve isn’t quite ready to move on from just exalting Bucky’s body yet. So after they’re both stripped naked, he simply settles back down between Bucky’s legs. And he doesn’t object in the slightest when Bucky starts grinding his hard, leaking cock desperately against Steve’s stomach.

“God, honey,” Steve moans, his lips brushing the words over Bucky’s right pec, “ _look_ at you.”

He seals his mouth over Bucky’s nipple, and flicks his tongue over the peaked nub. Bucky gasps, arching into his mouth.

“You are,” Steve continues, kissing his way across Bucky’s chest to the other side, “the most beautiful person in the entire world, my love.” He laves his tongue over Bucky’s other nipple, then closes his lips over it, and sucks, enjoying the wrecked little noises that fall from Bucky’s mouth. “You’re the most amazing person I know,” Steve adds, and licks a stripe up between his fiancé’s perfect tits.

Bucky squirms, grinding against Steve even more, moaning brokenly as Steve starts mouthing down his torso, between his ribs. His waist fits into Steve’s hands like they were carved out for each other. Like pieces of a puzzle. A perfect fit.

He strokes his thumbs in circles, and tightens his grip on that little waist, scraping his teeth lightly over the ridge of Bucky’s abs.

“ _Baby_ ,” Bucky gasps, making Steve’s mouth, open and pressed to Bucky’s skin, curl up at the corners. “Baby, I need— Come on, honey, gimme—” He cuts off into a ragged exhale as Steve’s tongue dips into his belly button.

“What was that?” Steve asks, smirking up at him, and Bucky’s attempt to glare down at him is adorably undermined by the absolutely fucked-out, glazed over look in his eyes. “Give you what, sweetheart?”

“Fuck me,” Bucky sighs, and Steve grins because it sounds as much like a curse as it does a request. “Gimme your _cock—god!_ ”

The way he swallows his own demand just because Steve’s tongue flicked lightly over the head of his cock is the most endearing thing ever, Steve thinks smugly. He laves the flat of his tongue more thoroughly over Bucky’s sweet slit, tasting his precum. Bucky may be in a hurry to move on into getting stuffed full of Steve’s cock, but Steve would happily worship at the altar of Bucky Barnes’ body until all the stars fell from the sky.

But then Bucky does something unexpected, surprising and delighting Steve just like he has done every single day that Steve has known him. He surges up, seizing Steve’s face and pulling him into a crushing kiss, just to leverage his way into rolling them both. Steve lands on his back, still halfway down the bed, staring with wide eyes up at his love, as Bucky straddles his stomach, pushing back just enough to pointedly rub his ass over Steve’s erection, and elicit a wrecked moan of his own from Steve’s lips.

Bucky’s hands are on Steve’s chest, squeezing and kneading, his mismatched thumbs rubbing circles over Steve’s nipples, and suddenly it’s _Steve_ who’s squirming and whining, arching up into Bucky’s hands while Bucky’s tongue delicately traces the underside of his jaw.

“ _Honey!_ ” Steve gasps brokenly when Bucky’s teeth scrape harshly over his pulse point.

“Yeah?” Bucky asks. His voice is rough and ragged, too. “That feel good, baby?” He pulls up as Steve nods helplessly, sitting up so he can watch the mewling mess he’s reducing his fiancé to. Bucky bites his lip — which is _entirely unfair_ , Steve thinks — and hums appreciatively at the sight, rolling both of Steve’s nipples between his thumbs and forefingers. It goes directly to Steve’s cock, the sensation of it, and for a wild moment, he wonders if he could come from just this — just Bucky’s fingers on his nipples, and Bucky’s eyes on his body.

He thinks…maybe he could.

“Jesus Christ,” Bucky sighs, raking his eyes over Steve’s torso, “the _tits_ on you, baby!”

Steve huffs out an approximation of a laugh that quickly turns into a groan when Bucky surges down to kiss his mouth, licking inside and crowding Steve’s tongue with his own in a way that very clearly says, _Mine_.

Steve couldn’t agree more.

He thrusts his hips upwards, fruitlessly searching for friction, but Bucky keeps himself just out of reach, teasing cruelly, no doubt in retaliation for the way Steve was teasing _him_ just minutes ago. But it’s not _fair_ when Bucky does it, so Steve gathers all of his (admittedly considerable) strength, wraps his arms around Bucky, and rolls them back over again so he’s back on top.

Bucky hooks his ankles behind Steve’s back while Steve presses their lips together in a few quick, messy kisses.

“You gonna let me fuck that sweet ass of yours now, honey?” Steve growls, sliding his cock, slick with precome, between Bucky’s asscheeks. As though Bucky weren’t just begging for it, as though this wasn’t exactly his plan when he started teasing Steve in turn. “Gonna let me fill you up?”

Bucky nods frantically, lifting his head, his lips searching for Steve’s. And Steve gives him what he wants, kisses him slow and deep and filthy, until Bucky’s whimpering into his mouth.

“Okay, honey,” Steve murmurs soothingly against Bucky’s lips. “I’ll give you what you need. Always take care’a you, huh?”

Bucky whines wordlessly while Steve rearranges them, turning Bucky onto his side, crowding up behind him after he’s pulled their lube out of the nightstand on his side. Working quickly, Steve’s got his fingers slicked up and ready by the time he’s fully spooned up against Bucky’s back, and when he pushes two fingers inside Bucky’s sweet little hole, they go in easy as anything.

Steve hums a moan against the shell of Bucky’s ear. “ _God_ , you’re still all open for me, aren’t you? Don’t even need any prep at all, huh?”

Bucky’s writhing in his arms again, shaking his head. “No,” he gasps. “No, just fuck me, Stevie, _please_.”

That brings out a deep, growling groan from Steve’s throat, and he fumbles for the lube again, just to perfunctorily slick himself up before he lines up with Bucky’s hole, and slides just the head of his cock inside.

Both of them let out little broken sounds at the feeling of being joined, even just slightly. Steve wraps his arms all the way around Bucky, surrounding and cocooning him with a love so great, he thinks someday it’ll simply absorb him, transforming him into absolutely nothing but adoration for the man in his arms.

Steve presses his lips to the space just behind Bucky’s ear, and starts pushing into him, slow and steady. Grins into Bucky’s skin when Bucky makes one of those little sobbing noises he gives when he’s feeling overwhelmed with how good it is.

He is open from this morning, but he’s still tight. _Amazing_ — hot and soft. Steve grunts his pleasure as he keeps pushing in, slow as he can manage, until his hips are snug at last against Bucky’s ass. He holds there, panting into Bucky’s ear, as Bucky gasps, hands clutching at Steve’s arms wrapped around him.

“Okay?” Steve breathes, and smiles wider when Bucky nods fervently. “Okay,” he repeats, and begins to move.

He pulls out slow, and then slowly pushes in again — repeats this once, twice, until Bucky’s a little more stretched, a little less tight. And then, because Steve can’t hold back anymore, the next slow pull is followed by a quick, harsh thrust as he slams his cock inside, exactly where he knows Bucky’s spot is.

Bucky makes another sobbing noise, louder and deeper than the last one, and Steve presses his pleased smile into the space behind Bucky’s jaw. He latches his mouth there on his next thrust, and begins sucking a bruise where he knows it’ll be visible when Bucky wears his hair back, his hips picking up speed as he nails Bucky’s prostate again and again.

As Steve fucks into him over and over, Bucky hooks his ankles around Steve’s, entwining their legs, and his hands cover Steve’s as he interlaces their fingers, too. He turns his head so Steve will kiss his mouth and swallow his high, whining moans. Binding them together, never to be torn asunder. Steve licks into his mouth, chasing the taste that is uniquely his, a taste Steve loves more than any other.

Another minute or so of hard, fast thrusts into him, and Bucky is mewling into Steve’s kiss, his back arching against Steve’s chest, his legs tensing as he clenches around Steve’s cock.

Steve breaks their kiss just so he can murmur, “I love you so fucking much, Bucky, I love you _so—fucking—much_ ,” each word punctuated by a hard thrust against his spot.

And that does it. Bucky’s body tenses for a long, silent, gasping moment, his body taut in arrant ecstasy — and then he’s coming. Spurting, untouched, onto his own chest.

Steve fucks him through it, keeps railing on his spot to prolong the feeling, make Bucky’s orgasm last and last. And when Bucky sobs out Steve’s name from parted, kiss-swollen lips, Steve’s own orgasm crashes into him like waves on the shore.

He’s pretty sure he whites out for a second, because when he comes back to his senses, he’s pressing wet, sloppy kisses against Bucky’s vibranium shoulder, and Bucky is babbling nonsense that sounds like praise.

It takes a minute of just lying there like that together before Steve pulls out, rolling Bucky onto his back so he can cover him with his own body, heedless of the sticky release between their chests, and kiss him deeply. Bucky hums, satisfied now that he’s filled, and leaking, and sated.

“Steve,” Bucky mumbles into the kiss.

Steve pulls back just enough to look at him through sleepily lidded eyes.

“You know how I said I thought you might be the love of my life?” Bucky asks, slurring a little.

Steve nods, feels his face and heart warm at the thought, and brushes a sweaty curl off of Bucky’s forehead.

“Well,” Bucky says, “you are. I know you are. I’ve never felt this way about anyone, the way I feel about you. You’re my whole heart, Stevie.”

He’s burbling, and Steve feels his heart fill to bursting. He smoothes a hand over Bucky’s head, his soft, damp curls, and smiles down on him.

“Bucky,” Steve whispers, “you’re the love of my life, too. You’re _my_ whole heart. I can’t stand how much I love you.”

Bucky’s smile is the prettiest thing in the whole, wide world.

Steve can’t help but kiss it.

🎈

“Are you ready?”

Bucky looks up from nervously adjusting his sleeves, into his sister’s eyes, a mirror of his own, and smiles.

He’s dressed in traditional Wakandan formalwear; trousers and long, navy blue cutaway coat, embroidered in a silvery-blue thread that matches his and Becca’s eyes. His hair is down, curls styled and tame, but still voluminous the way he knows Steve likes. Becca’s dress is form-fitting and sleeveless, with a neckline that traces her collarbone. It’s the same color as the embroidery in Bucky’s coat, and she looks absolutely stunning in it.

She adjusts his high collar, pretending she’s not blinking back tears at the sight of her big brother on his wedding day, and Bucky pretends he’s not blinking back tears, too.

“Yes,” Bucky tells her, smiling wide. “I’m so ready. I don’t think I’ve ever been readier for anything in my whole life.”

Becca laughs softly, and pats his chest. “You look happy,” she breathes, grinning up at him. Becca’s tall, and Bucky only has an inch or two on her, but he feels like a giant today.

“Bex,” he breathes back, “I’ve _never_ been happier.”

“I’m so glad,” Becca tells him. “Steve is wonderful. I couldn’t be more delighted for you, Jamie.”

Bucky doesn’t manage to keep one little tear from slipping past his eyelashes this time, his smile wide and bright as his face warms with it.

“Thanks, Bex,” he whispers. Becca wraps him in a hug.

She leads him out of the tree line, over to the edge of his lake, where T’Challa, Shuri, and Steve are already waiting under the flower-adorned chuppah. Shuri is wearing a gold dress similar to Becca’s, but with more traditional Wakandan beading in purple, and T’Challa is in the same type of formalwear as Bucky, in purple with gold embroidery.

But Steve is the standout. He’s wearing the same trousers and cutaway coat, but his is stark white, the embroidery the same silvery-blue as Bucky’s. With his peach skin and golden hair, the white makes him glow like a star in the setting sun. Like the sun itself. Bucky could no more resist turning ever towards him than a flower could resist turning to the sun.

Steve watches Bucky approach with a look of pure, unfettered love overflowing from his eyes. Bucky feels safe under that gaze. He feels home.

As Becca leads Bucky toward them, Shuri beats out a rhythm on her drum, and as she does, they all begin to dance. It’s nothing extravagant, mostly just a kind of bounce to the rhythm, but this is one thing that Bucky has always loved about ceremonies and celebrations in Wakanda. One thing that he wanted here, even if their ceremony might be largely European, with a Jewish flair. Where the European standard for ceremonies may be one of pomp and solemnity, here, they dance. It’s joyful, exuberant. This is a wedding, there _should_ be dancing.

It’s only as Bucky reaches Steve under the chuppah that Shuri’s drum beats cease. Becca kisses Bucky on the cheek, and smiles at him through happy tears. And then she and Shuri step back, and Steve takes both of Bucky’s hands in his.

Bucky can’t take his eyes away from Steve, standing here, radiant, to give himself to _Bucky_ , of all people. To give Bucky his future. Even as T’Challa stands between them and the lake, and begins to speak, Bucky can’t see anything but Steve’s shining light.

“We are here today,” T’Challa begins, “to bear witness to the union of Steven Grant Rogers and James Buchanan Barnes. Bucky,” he says, and Bucky finally looks at him at the direct address, “I have known you for almost my entire life.” He’s grinning brightly at Bucky, and Bucky grins right back, overwhelmed with his joy. “We grew from children together, and we have shared many hopes and heartbreaks. Many dreams, and many losses. When we were young, you told me, right here, how you, quote, ‘like boys just as much as girls.’”

Bucky laughs wetly at the memory — the same one he shared with Steve when he brought him here a few days ago.

T’Challa’s smile widens. “Do you remember what I asked you then?”

Bucky cocks his head. “You asked if I thought M’Baku was hot,” he answers, confused as to how the hell _this_ is relevant.

As Shuri dissolves into cackling laughter behind him, in front of him, T’Challa chuckles softly.

“After that,” he prompts.

It takes a second — this happened only a few years before Bucky’s brain was scrambled and manipulated to hell and back — but then, like a light through the mists, he remembers.

“You asked me what kind of person I wanted to marry someday.”

T’Challa nods. “You told me that you wanted to marry someone kind, and warm, who would shine like the sun.”

Bucky hadn’t remembered that at all, not until T’Challa just said it. He gapes at his brother, and then turns to stare at Steve, who’s looking back at him with shining eyes, so full of wonder.

Bucky has always, since the day he _met_ Steve, thought that Steve was the sun. He’s even told him as much, whispered into spaces between them in the quiet haven of their bed. He honestly had no idea that he’d projected the desire for _this man_ from the tender age of thirteen.

The idea that Bucky wanted Steve before he even knew him — that he was yearning for him so long before he even knew he _existed_ — feels both too big, and perfectly _right_.

Their whole lives, they were orbiting each other. Perhaps there’s always been something about them two that’s transcended the bounds of normality.

Perhaps they really were made for each other after all.

“I could not be more thrilled,” T’Challa continues, as Bucky stares into the depths of Steve’s love for him, caught in those cornflower blue eyes, “that you have found your sunshine, Bucky.

“Steve,” he continues, turning to Steve, who turns to him, too, while Bucky just keeps staring at his sunshine. “I have not known you long, but the way you look at Bucky, the way you care for him, and listen to him — your love for him is _abundantly_ clear. I believe I speak for all of us who are here to witness your union when I say that Bucky is one of the best people anyone could have the fortune of knowing.”

And that— That startles Bucky into tearing his eyes away from Steve to search T’Challa’s face, like he might find a lie there. But he doesn’t. Not even close. And when he looks back at Shuri and Becca, they’re both nodding like that’s _true_. Like they really think that about _Bucky_. Which—how?

But T’Challa is still speaking, still addressing Steve. “You could not have chosen a better person to live your life beside. I see how happy you both make each other, and it is my dearest blessing to you that you will continue to give such happiness to each other for the rest of your lives.”

Steve turns his dazzling smile back to him, and Bucky gasps with it — with the utter beauty of it, and the thought that he might get to watch that smile grow old, and never falter.

“You both have prepared your vows to each other,” T’Challa’s voice says from somewhere to Bucky’s right. “Steve?”

Steve’s smile turns into a wide, watery grin. “Bucky,” he begins, his voice deep, and remarkably level for the tears in his eyes. “When I first saw you across that bar, something in my soul said, ‘That one.’ And since that night, I haven’t looked back once. I love you more than I ever thought possible. You are my heart. My home. Your goodness lights up my life, and I cannot imagine a future without you by my side.”

His voice breaks a little at that, and Bucky tries hard not to burst into tears in response.

“From this day forward, I promise you my words when they are needed, and to share in your silence when they’re not. I promise you my hands,” Steve says, lifting one of them, joined with Bucky’s, to catch the tear that’s fallen from Bucky’s eyelashes, “to hold yours through the good times, and the bad ones; and my arms, to wake you from your nightmares, to protect you, and to hold you, for the rest of our lives. I promise you my life, my heart, my hopes and my dreams, and I promise always to follow and honor yours.”

More tears slip from Bucky’s eyes, and Steve is fully crying now, too. “You are my first and only priority,” he continues, his voice rising up a little higher than normal, “and I promise to pick you up, and to lift you up, and to remind you that I love you every single day. From this day, as from the moment I met you, I am completely and totally yours. Never again will you have to face the future alone.

“You are my everything, Bucky Barnes,” Steve whispers fervently. “My whole, entire world. And this I vow to you today, and every day, for the rest of time. I love you, and I believe in you, more than anything else in the universe.”

Bucky takes in a shuddering breath, and Steve lets out a little wet laugh, lifting his hands from Bucky’s for just long enough to place them on either side of his face and wipe away the tears on his cheeks. And then they’re right back inside Bucky’s hands again. Right where they’ll always belong.

Faintly, Bucky hears T’Challa say his name, indicating his turn, and he clears his throat, knowing with a deep certainty that he’s fucked when it comes to getting through this without becoming a blubbering mess.

“Steve,” he begins. His voice is already weak and ragged. He takes another deep breath, trying to compose himself enough to continue. “I am, every day, humbled and amazed that out of everyone you’ve met, and known, and loved, you somehow chose to stand up here with _me_. You saw me in that bar, and you saw something in me that no one, including me, has ever seen. You have been my savior, and my champion, so many times already in my life, and today, I vow with everything in my power that I will be yours.”

Bucky’s voice cracks as he watches tears spill onto Steve’s cheeks. “I promise to cherish every moment I get to spend with you, and to never take our time together for granted. I promise to share in your every grief and heartache, as well as your every joy and celebration. I promise you my tears and my laughter, and every adventure we will ever see.”

A small huff of a laugh escapes Bucky’s lips, so overwhelmed is he with true, deep happiness. He squeezes Steve’s hands in his, smiling through his joyful tears at the man he loves like he’s dying.

“You have filled my life with a joy and a sense of peace that I have never known before,” he breathes, and it doesn’t matter if no one else can hear him, so long as Steve can. “I don’t know how, but I feel as though I have always been yours, Steve Rogers. That until we met, my soul was just waiting for you. You are the light and the love of my life, and today I give you all of me. I have no idea where this train we’re on is going, but I don’t care, as long as I get to go with you.”

Bucky’s face splits with his grin. “I’m with you, Steve Rogers,” he whispers, “to the end of the line. And when we get off — someday when we’re old and grey, I hope, and looking back at a shared life with no trace of regret — I promise to be with you there, too.”

At least Steve is crying just as much as he is, Bucky thinks.

Steve lifts Bucky’s right hand to his lips, and presses a soft kiss to his fingers. And before he can lower their joined hands again, Bucky pulls them in, and kisses Steve’s fingers, too. Somewhere to his left, either Shuri or Becca sighs out a little, “ _Aww!_ ”

The rest of the ceremony passes in a haze, as Bucky gazes into the eyes of the man he’s about to call his husband. The man of his literal dreams. Shuri produces custom rings she made for them to exchange, even though they won’t be wearing them in public for a while. Bucky slips Steve’s onto his left hand, and Steve slides Bucky’s onto his right. His vibranium arm is a part of him, yes, but Bucky wants his promise to Steve to live against his skin. Becca, voice high and wavering, recites seven blessings she wrote for them, and Bucky hears none of them. He’ll ask her to repeat them another time. For now, he can’t concentrate on anything at all except for Steve’s beautiful, smiling face. Bucky says, “I do,” when asked, and Steve’s lips form the same words, the prettiest thing Bucky’s ever seen.

“Then,” T’Challa says, and though Bucky can’t take his eyes off of Steve to see him, his smile is evident in his voice, “by my authority as the ruler of this nation, I now pronounce you married.”

Bucky breaks the glass. T’Challa’s voice declares, “You may kiss your husband.” His husband.

Steve kisses Bucky deeply and joyously, cradling his face in both hands as Bucky clutches at Steve’s waist. A shower of flower petals rain down around them. Bucky cannot stop smiling into their kiss.

They’re married.

They’re _husbands_.

Bucky has never felt so whole.

🎈

Ever since they got to Wakanda, Bucky’s moods have been swinging wildly between incredibly happy, and very, very low. He has so many things to be happy for, and he wishes he could just enjoy being near his family, getting married to the love of his life, and being so surrounded by love — but his mental health isn’t doing very well right now. Between feelings of worthlessness, grappling with feeling like he’s a burden, and the PTSD flare-up he’s been having in response to being kidnapped and tortured by Hydra again, he’s been struggling a _lot_.

A fact that has never been so highlighted as it is when, just hours after his wedding, fresh off of taking a post-wedding shower with Steve, and getting fucked stupid by his _husband_ for the first time, his ring in his pocket, he’s sitting in a room with his family, all of whom are joking and laughing, and enjoying their time together — and all he can feel is restless discomfort.

It’s everything, all at once. It’s the niggling fear he feels at being in the place he was once taken from. It’s the guilt he can’t shake at having kept himself away from his family — who all dearly love him, and want nothing more than to spend time with him — for years, with no real explanation. It’s even a nagging sense that Steve made the wrong choice in becoming Bucky’s husband. That someday, he’s going to realize that Bucky _isn’t_ everything Steve thinks he is, and he’s going to be unhappy. Or worse, Bucky worries selfishly, he’ll leave.

After a while, Bucky finds he just can’t sit here anymore, trying to fake the levity and casual comfort that clearly comes so naturally to everyone else in the room. He makes up some reason to leave, like needing to use the bathroom or something, that even he doesn’t listen to, and excuses himself from the room, leaving Steve and his family behind.

It’s like he’s being supernaturally drawn to it. He feels the pull, deep in his gut, the entire time, as he climbs the stairs to the room he shares with Steve, digs in his suitcase, and pulls out his coat. Almost mechanically, like his movements aren’t even his own, he rips open the seam he carefully sewed back up the other day, and pulls out the bag of golden-brown powder inside the lining.

He knows he should have thrown it out. Flushed it down the toilet. Handed it to someone at the hospital, even. Just _told_ Steve about it, at the very _least_. But he didn’t.

No. Like the addict he is, he hid it. Sewed it back up where it wouldn’t be found, and didn’t mention it at all.

Bucky locks himself in the bathroom with his bag of smack, and drops it on the counter next to the sink. He stares down at it, trying to convince himself not to take it. Not to pour a line out on the counter right here, and snort the fucking stuff up his nose.

_It won’t help_ , his logical brain tries to reason with himself. _It’ll only feel good for a minute, if that, and then you’ll just feel like shit_.

But he _wants_.

Wants the release. Wants the numb feeling of calm. Wants _one goddamn minute_ of escape from all of the feelings raging around in his head, pulling him under the surface, drowning him here he stands.

_Just a little_ , a voice whispers inside his mind. It doesn’t even sound like his voice, but it is. He knows it is. He’s heard to so many times before. _Just a little bit, and then I’ll be done._

Bucky bites his lip, and tears his gaze from the heroin to meet his own eyes in the mirror. The blue is almost entirely sapped from his irises, leaving only pale grey and desperation.

He drops his gaze again.

He’s so fucking ashamed. He can’t even look _himself_ in the eye.

About twenty minutes after Bucky said he was going to the bathroom, and then practically ran out of the room, Steve starts to get concerned. It’s not that he’s been clocking the length of Bucky’s usual bathroom trips or anything, but there was something in Bucky’s eyes when he excused himself that worries at Steve’s mind. Something wild, maybe. Wrong.

It’s been a while now, and something just feels…off.

Not one to ignore his instincts, especially after what happened in Canada, Steve tells the Zimaevs and the royal family that he’ll be right back, not even providing a real excuse, and slips out, climbing the stairs two at a time, a little faster than he usually might. He doesn’t want to have to admit to himself that, though it could be absolutely _nothing_ , he’s scared.

When Steve gets up to their room, Bucky is nowhere to be seen, and the bathroom door is closed. That’s not alarming, per se, Bucky did say that was why he was coming up here. But Bucky’s suitcase is open, his one-sleeved coat cast haphazardly on the floor.

That feeling of _wrong_ pokes at Steve’s brain again, this time harder, and louder. He walks up to the bathroom door, and knocks lightly.

“Bucky?” he calls through the door. “Honey, you okay?”

There’s no answer.

🎈

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **Next time:**   
> 
> 
> I wrote a little hurt/comfort-but-mostly-comfort piece yesterday because I needed it. [Here it is, if you need it, too!](https://archiveofourown.org/works/27655015)
> 
> SAMHSA’s National Helpline, 1-800-662-HELP (4357), (also known as the Treatment Referral Routing Service) or TTY: 1-800-487-4889 is a confidential, free, 24-hour-a-day, 365-day-a-year, information service, in English and Spanish, for individuals and family members facing mental and/or substance use disorders. This service provides referrals to local treatment facilities, support groups, and community-based organizations.


	22. Twenty-Two: December 17th

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I so deeply love reading your comments! Thank you so much for reading and commenting, I hope you enjoy this chapter, and some of the conclusions we're beginning to come to!

Bucky growls, frustrated and _angry_. He can’t even fucking look _himself_ in the eye? And for what?! Chasing a high he can’t even really _feel_ anymore because some _assholes_ forced it on him for _years?_

No.

No, he’s not _fucking doing this_ anymore. He’s come so far, and he’s worked so _hard_ , and he’s gotten _so much better_ , and he’s _NOT. FUCKING. DOING. THIS._

Bucky snatches the bag off the counter and yanks it open. He didn’t drag himself out of that pit they threw him in — _kept_ him in! — rebuild his entire _fucking_ life, and then find and marry his soulmate, just to let himself throw it all away like this. He tugs open the lid of the toilet, and tips the bag of heroin upside down over it, watching all that power fall into the bowl and float in the water for a moment, before he flushes it down, along with everything Hydra has ever fucking wanted from him.

_Fuck_ them.

After it’s gone, Bucky flushes the toilet a second time, just for good measure. And, because he _will not_ face temptation like this again, he _refuses_ to, he takes the bag back to the sink and rinses it out entirely, watches as the rest of the powder goes down the drain.

He’s _done_.

Bucky is so filled to the brim with rage, shaking with it as it rushes in his ears, that he doesn’t hear when Steve calls his name. Doesn’t hear him knock the first time, or the second.

No, it’s not until Steve literally kicks the door down with an explosive _bang!_ that Bucky startles, and spins around to see his brand-new husband standing there, looking like he’s ready to fight an entire army right here in the bathroom.

“Are you okay?” Steve gasps when all he sees is Bucky standing there. He rushes forward, and takes Bucky’s face between his hands, searching over his face, and then his whole body, looking for any source of pain, anything not right.

Bucky realizes he’s trembling in the same moment Steve does, and Steve releases his face to hold his shaking hands instead.

“I’m okay,” Bucky chokes out his response belatedly at Steve’s fearful expression. “I’m— _fuck_.”

The curse is spat out through his teeth as he feels his knees start to buckle. Steve catches him, even though Bucky manages not to fall on his own, and drags him into a tight hold.

“Baby,” Steve murmurs into Bucky’s hair, an edge of desperation he can’t hide piercing his voice, “what happened? What’s wrong? Come on, sweetheart, please tell me.”

Bucky doesn’t really realize that Steve is escorting him out of the bathroom until he’s being gently lowered to sit on the bed. Steve sits right next to him, their bodies pressed together, and holds his hands, and kisses his face, while Bucky breathes in a shuddering breath, then exhales it all in a long gust.

If he’s honest, Bucky doesn’t really want to tell Steve what happened. How close he came to doing what he’d _sworn_ to himself years ago he’d never do again. Swore it, right after that night when Nat had to drag him out of their tiny bathroom just to have space to resuscitate him after shooting naloxone into his thigh, because she’d found him in the throes of an accidental overdose.

But as Steve keeps pressing soft, patient kisses to his cheekbones, his jawline, his forehead, his eyelids, his nose, Bucky realizes: this is the man who proposed to him four months after they first met. This is the man who, just a few hours ago, stood up in front of witnesses, and promised to love him for the rest of their lives. Who kisses him every night before he falls asleep. Who’s saved his life not once, but twice now. Who has never, not _once_ , in all the time he’s known Bucky, even come _close_ to passing judgement on him. Not once.

So Bucky sighs, and tells Steve _everything_.

At first, he’s just telling Steve about the heroin — how he found it, how he hid it, how he almost took it, and then dumped it down the drain. When he’s gotten all of that out, he looks up to the crease between Steve’s eyebrows, and breathes out a harsh breath.

“I—” Steve begins, then stops. “You’re just barely off of them triggering your addiction again, you had access to heroin in a time of stress, and you got rid of it? By yourself?”

Bucky blinks. “Yeah,” he replies softly. He hasn’t really…thought of it like that.

Steve reaches up and brushes a thumb gently over Bucky’s cheek. “Your strength is…astounding,” he whispers fervently. “Honestly, Buck, every time I think I know how strong you are, you do something that blows me the fuck away again.”

“But—” Bucky starts. “I hid it. I didn’t tell you about it. I—”

Steve is watching him, like he’s waiting for Bucky to reach a breakthrough. And god fucking damn it, maybe Bucky is, because he blinks again, realizing.

“I threw it away.”

Steve nods, a small smile playing on his lips, surrounded by his pretty beard.

“Okay, but—” Bucky argues with nothing, shaking his head. He doesn’t deserve this, doesn’t deserve to be given grace.

“No, I’m not— Steve, I can’t hold on to _anything_ ,” Bucky hears himself arguing, even though Steve isn’t trying to fight with him. Bucky is trying to fight. He’s fighting. He’s always been fucking _fighting_. “I float through life like a fucking _balloon_ , tethered to nothing, just drifting around. I’m not stable, I’m not dependable, I’m not _strong!_ I stopped talking to my family out of _nowhere_ six years ago, because I couldn’t bear the idea that they’d learn about what I did, and they’d end up hating me!”

Steve still doesn’t actually say anything yet, just keeps watching Bucky with an unbearable understanding etched across his face. But that feels like it _hurts_ , and Bucky suddenly finds that he can’t _stop_ talking, can’t stop trying to _fight_.

“I’m not a very good person, Steve— No, I’m not!” he insists, before Steve even opens his mouth to disagree, because Bucky knows he will, he _knows_ Steve will try to tell him he’s wrong, but he’s not, he’s not wrong about this, he’s _not_. “I could have spoken to my family, or to T’Challa, or Shuri, at any time over the past six years, but I didn’t! I missed _six more years_ , and that was _my_ fault, it wasn’t even Hydra.”

He huffs, irritated and wild. Steve isn’t even fighting him, why can’t Bucky _stop fighting_?

“Shuri was only a year old when they took me away from her, did you know that? And Becca was only twelve. The next time I saw them, Shuri was eleven, and Becca was twenty-two. I missed… _everything_. They took that from me, but I did, too.”

“You didn’t go back when you got out?” Steve asks, breaking his silence at last.

Bucky looks down at his hands, suddenly unable to meet Steve’s eyes. “No,” he whispers, so quietly.

“Why not?”

“I didn’t— Steve, they turned me into an operative,” Bucky says, the anger draining out of him like water wrung from a sponge, replaced at once by deep, wearying shame. But it still feels like a fight. All that shame, all that weight, and he still feels like he’s fighting. “And I wasn’t just killing random people, they used me specifically to bring instability to T’Chaka’s reign.” He closes his eyes. Can’t bear this. Can’t bear to look at anything as he confesses, “I killed Wakandans. Agents, ambassadors…their families…. I was so fucking scared of coming back — coming _home_ — just to find I wasn’t welcome here anymore.”

“Oh, Buck,” Steve sighs. A large, warm hand cradles Bucky’s face again. Bucky doesn’t deserve it, but he doesn’t move away.

“And then Uncle T’Chaka died,” Bucky continues, fighting with Steve’s sympathy. He still can’t stop, even though he’s weary, even though what’s coming out now is more confession than anything else. “And I wasn’t here. I hadn’t seen him. I didn’t even hear about it right away, because I was overseas with the Howling Commandos by then, and we’d been in back-to-back missions for weeks at that point. When I finally got back to base, there was a letter waiting for me from T’Challa. I was in touch with him and my family then, but only through letters. I wouldn’t even talk to them on the phone. But this letter from T’Challa tells me that his father had died and that he — this kid I _grew up_ with, who had been my _brother_ — was now _king_. He also said that he’d already pardoned me for all the crimes I’d committed during my captivity. He said it wasn’t my fault.” Bucky’s eyes well with salty tears. “I didn’t believe him.” Still doesn’t.

“Sweetheart—” Steve starts, but Bucky can’t fucking stop.

“I didn’t think I deserved it,” he says quickly, before Steve can tell him otherwise. “I don’t even know if I replied to the letter, or sent my condolences. But then the explosion, and my amputation, and I was just so _fucking_ alone in New York, where I was being treated. Ma and Becca flew out as soon as they could, but they had to go through so many security measures, it took almost two weeks for them to get out there. And then I saw my mom and my baby sister for the first time in ten years, and I don’t think I stopped crying for two whole days. Didn’t take much to convince me to come home for a while after all that.”

He finally glances up at Steve again, and is met with nothing but kindness and love.

It _hurts_.

He drops his gaze.

“I just—” Bucky says, his words finally starting to peter out, even if this fight never will. “I could have done better. I could have done more. I _should_ have been better. For them.”

Steve is quiet for a while. Bucky picks at the blanket between them, his mind and ears and body all buzzing.

Finally, Steve sighs.

“You don’t want to believe me when I tell you about how good you are,” he says softly as Bucky trembles. “So I’m not gonna tell you about how you did the best you could. Or how you were so deeply traumatized by those people and what they did to you — what they _made_ you do — that it was actually _understandable_ you fell off the grid for a while. That you barely knew who you were for those first few years after you got out, and that I know that part of why you’ve avoided your family for the last six is because you want to protect them from having to face the reality of what you had to survive. And I won’t tell you that your family _knows_ that, and that that’s why they’re not angry at you.”

Bucky glances up at Steve with narrowed eyes, and Steve smiles innocently back at him.

“Feel like you definitely just told me _all_ of that,” Bucky points out. Steve’s innocent smile widens into a grin. Bucky loves him, god help him. He doesn’t deserve to. Hasn’t earned the right to be so in love with someone this kind. Someone who returns his love so fucking easily. Things aren’t supposed to be easy, not for Bucky.

Bucky is supposed to have to fight.

“I wish you’d believe me,” Steve murmurs, brushing his thumb over Bucky’s cheekbone.

Bucky tries to close his eyes, but can’t break his gaze away from that cornflower blue.

“Wait,” Steve says suddenly, frowning like he’s just realizing something. “Is that—? The balloon?”

Bucky frowns right back at Steve, startled a little bit out of his thoughts, because that was gibberish. “What balloon?”

“The night we met,” Steve explains, “after I kissed you, you gave me your number. You put your name in my phone as just ‘Bucky,’ no last name, with the little red balloon emoji. That’s still what I have you under in my phone back home. And then you sent that same emoji to yourself so you’d have my number, too. I always wondered why you related hard enough to that one emoji that you put it in your name for your contact, but _this_ is why, isn’t it? You think of yourself as a balloon. Just floating away. Like you’re transient? Like you don’t really matter?”

Breathing is suddenly more harshly difficult. “I didn’t—” Bucky stammers. “I mean I wasn’t thinking of it in quite those terms, but—yeah. Yeah, I don’t stick around. Whether that’s because people let me go, or I just don’t have enough of an anchor, I don’t—”

Steve is frowning at him again, but there’s that unbearable understanding back in his eyes, too. Bucky squirms under his gaze, under the mortifying ordeal of being known.

And here’s the problem: even as he’s saying it — even as his mouth is forming the words — he knows there’s something not totally true about it all. Something not right.

Because…maybe Bucky hasn’t exactly been tethered or anchored anywhere — _before Steve_.

He kept everyone away. Even, to some extent, RJ, the person he was closest to in the world before Steve walked into his life. And that night, when he entered his name into the phone of a stranger he _desperately_ wanted to know, maybe he added that little red balloon because that’s what he thought he was. Maybe it was a warning to Steve not to get too close, either. Maybe it was his way of putting up a fight against how achingly he already wanted Steve to stay. _I won’t stay long_ , maybe he was trying to say. _Don’t expect too much. I’ll only float away._

But he didn’t, did he? Even when he tried, even when Steve’s safety depended on it, Steve didn’t let him go. Steve, who didn’t heed a cryptic emoji-given warning, who fell in love with Bucky hard and fast, who opened his arms and his heart, and somehow found Bucky’s heart open for him, too. Steve, who’s held Bucky’s hand through all of this, who didn’t flinch when he learned the truth about Bucky’s past, who has loved him intensely and unconditionally, and who made it _so easy_ for Bucky to love him back just as hard.

Steve has anchored Bucky. Steve has kept him close.

But even more than that, Bucky hasn’t let _himself_ float away. Bucky didn’t keep Steve at arm’s length. Ever since Steve came barreling back into his life and Bucky told him everything, he hasn’t pushed him away, or kept the truth from him.

He found the courage to tell Steve all the things he’s never told anyone who wasn’t his therapist. He summoned the strength to leave Steve when it was necessary, and he was brave enough to leap when Steve asked him to run away with him. He was brave enough to _trust_ Steve, to place his future in Steve’s strong hands, and to believe that Steve won’t let him fall.

Maybe— Maybe Bucky isn’t as weak as he thinks he is. Maybe he really is strong.

And maybe he was that little red balloon once. Maybe.

But is he still?

Is he the same?

He thinks—maybe not. Maybe he’s different now.

Or maybe…he was never really a balloon at all.

He’s been fighting non-stop for so fucking long, but what? What the _hell_ has he been fighting?

_Himself?_

This whole time, has he really just been fighting himself? Because he doesn’t think he deserves to be happy? Is that even fucking true? Who told him that?

Hydra did. That’s who told him that. Why the fuck did he believe them?

Bucky’s hands are shaking again, but Steve’s cover them and squeeze, grounding him right here. Right now.

“ _Fuck_ ,” Bucky breathes.

Steve smiles at him softly. “Are you having a breakthrough?” he asks gently, and Bucky nods.

“I think—maybe I am,” he replies. “Am I…? Is my entire self-perception and self-worth based on lies I was told as a captive prisoner?”

Steve actually throws his head back and laughs at that, shattering the quivering tension shaking through Bucky’s body, and pulling Bucky in by their joined hands to wrap his arms around him instead. Steve squeezes him tight, and presses little giggly kisses into Bucky’s neck.

“ _God!_ ” he sighs loudly. “ _Finally_ , you figured that out!”

Bucky feels utterly overwhelmed. Later, maybe, he’ll whine about how Steve never thought to tell him this (even though Bucky would never have believed him if he did), or maybe he’ll try to backtrack on his own breakthrough to undermine himself again (that’s probably inevitable, to be honest, it’s how healing and recovery tend to actually work). But for now, he doesn’t.

For now, Bucky just holds onto Steve — his husband, who loves him, who _knows_ him — and kisses him, slow, and deep, and grateful.

Maybe Bucky has always been stronger than he thinks he is. But Steve— Steve saw that all along.

He’s known Bucky all along.

🎈

Healing isn’t linear, even after a breakthrough, and Bucky does go back on his own convictions a few times. He has more than one breakdown, sobbing into his pillow because he doesn’t think he deserves to be as happy as Steve makes him, or as loved as his family treats him, Steve’s fingers in his hair and lips on his temple, whispering truth into his skin to try to counter all the lies raging through Bucky’s mind.

But Bucky also grows. He also starts to figure out how to battle those lies. He also learns a lot about how little _worthiness_ matters when it comes to _love_.

He gets back in touch with his old therapist, and even manages a few remote sessions with Dr. Banner (over a highly secure network that Becca sets up for him), who expresses genuine delight at working with Bucky again, even though it’s been a few years since Bucky has seen him. Steve sees someone, too, referred by one of the doctors who was on Bucky’s care team when they first arrived, to help him through the trauma of Bucky’s kidnapping.

It’s hard work for both of them, this therapy thing. But with a loving and supportive husband there to hold on to, both of them agree that it’s work worth doing.

It’s not linear, no, but it’s progress.

🎈

One year passes into another. Near the end of January, Steve and Bucky have been married for almost six weeks, and still only the people who actually attended their wedding know about it. Still, the joy of being legally promised to each other for the rest of their lives is palpable between them. There’s a security in it that Bucky has never known before, and to live this reality with _Steve_ , the best person Bucky’s ever known, is his greatest dream come true.

Another very fun part of this is that they’re having sex a _lot_. Sure, they had sex a lot before they got married, but these days, it’s not unheard of for them to go a few rounds a _day_ — often right when they wake up _and_ before they fall asleep, sometimes with an added go ‘round in the mid-afternoon, just because. And it’s _good_. Better, even, than it was before, any lingering insecurities gone now, leaving nothing but love and trust between them.

Which also means it’s gotten kinkier. Something Bucky _very_ much appreciates.

In fact—

“On your knees.”

Turns out, Steve’s Captain Voice is five thousand times hotter when it’s being used to give orders to _Bucky_.

Naked, hard, and panting, Bucky drops to his knees on command. His mouth is already open and eager, but Steve just looks down at him with condescending sympathy. He cups Bucky’s jaw with his hand, stroking his thumb along the line of it.

“Sweet boy,” Steve soughs, and Bucky doesn’t even try to suppress the way that makes him shake. “So good for me, huh, baby?”

“Yes,” Bucky sighs as his eyes fall shut. But Steve gives his jaw a little shake, and he snaps them open again.

“Eyes on me,” Steve commands, making Bucky shiver again. “That’s it, honey. Oh, you’re so fucking good, aren’t you?”

Steve’s hand releases his jaw to slide into his hair and fist in it, yanking Bucky’s head back painfully. If he could, Bucky would purr.

He wants to reach forward and get at Steve’s jeans, get them open and _off_ , but he knows he’s not supposed to. Not yet. Not without permission.

He feels so taken care of this way. It’s good — it’s _so_ good — being offered this chance to completely give up and let go. To hand over control to his adoring husband, a man he loves and trusts entirely, and know, with complete certainty, that Steve will give him everything he needs. He doesn’t need to make decisions, or even _think_. He just needs to listen. To obey. To trust.

It’s so _incredibly_ freeing.

“Fuck,” Steve sighs, brushing the thumb of the hand not fisted in Bucky’s hair over his lower lip, kiss-swollen and dropped open. “God, baby, this _mouth_. Goddamn obscene. Like you were made for suckin’ cock, you know that?”

A soft moan escapes Bucky’s lips. Steve smirks at the sound.

“You wanna suck me off, sweetheart?” he asks. Bucky tries to nod, but Steve’s hand is too tight in his hair, it stings to move his head. It feels so good.

“Yes, sir.”

Steve hums, and slips his thumb between Bucky’s lips, watching with dark, dark, nearly-black eyes as Bucky takes it inside his mouth and sucks, tongues at the digit greedily, taking anything Steve will give him.

“Okay,” Steve relents. “Such a good boy, Buck,” he murmurs. “Been so fucking sweet for me. Go on, you can have it. Take it out, it’s yours.”

The moment he’s given permission, Bucky scrambles to reach for Steve’s jeans. Steve took his own shirt off after he quickly and forcefully stripped Bucky, but his jeans have been in the way for far too long.

Bucky’s hands shake as he fumbles with Steve’s fly, so it takes too long to get it open. But Steve is patient with him, still holding his head back, and now just gently petting his face with his other hand. His wedding ring feels cool against Bucky’s face, and it makes Bucky shiver with want. They’ve been making a point of wearing their rings when they have sex. The sight and feel of them, the reminder of their vows to each other — especially when the rings are the _only_ things they have on — is proving a special kind of thrill for them both.

Getting fucked by his husband with their wedding rings on is Bucky’s favorite activity, he’s already decided about twelve times over.

When Bucky finally gets the zipper down, he lets out a wrecked noise at the sight of Steve’s hard, thick cock, unobstructed by clothes now, since Steve hasn’t bothered with underwear today. Bucky’s mouth waters at the sight of that huge thing; soft, and flushed pink, the head peeking out of the foreskin and dripping little beads of precome.

Bucky’s tongue flicks out to dart hungrily over his lips as he yanks Steve’s jeans down off of his hips. Steve’s hand in his hair softens, releasing him so he can push forward and taste the tip of that pretty cock while he finishes pulling Steve’s pants down and off of his legs.

Steve groans as Bucky laps at his slit. “ _Fuck_ , baby,” he huffs. “Don’t leave me much self control when you do that. Wanna fuck that pretty mouth of yours, make you choke on it.”

“ _Please_ ,” Bucky moans, goosebumps rising all over his body at the thought. “Please, sir,” he adds, pleased when the address forces another soft groan from Steve’s slack mouth. “Fuck my mouth, choke me on it, sir, _please_.”

With an almost feral growl, Steve’s hand fists in Bucky’s hair again, and Bucky eagerly opens his mouth wide, just in time for Steve to take his own cock in hand and force it into Bucky’s mouth, thrusting in harshly as Bucky sputters and chokes around Steve’s girth. _Fuck_ , that’s good, _fuck_.

Steve doesn’t give Bucky a chance to recover, just starts fucking into him, down his throat. And Bucky is drooling, letting out cut-off coughs, and loving every second of it. He loves that Steve can be rough with him. That Steve doesn’t see him as fragile, as breakable. Steve _knows_ that Bucky is strong.

After only a few thrusts, Steve pulls Bucky off by his hair, and yanks his head back again, forcing him to look hazily up into Steve’s blue eyes.

“Gimme a color, baby,” Steve commands, and Bucky smiles.

“Green,” he replies instantly, following the traffic light system they’ve agreed on. “Fuck, sir, so _fucking_ green.”

Steve’s responding grin is predatory. He shoves back into Bucky’s mouth so violently, Bucky has to try like hell to repress the reflex to gag on it.

And then, all at once, like something in him just _shifts_ , all Bucky knows is the slide of Steve’s cock down his throat, the stretch of his mouth around its girth, the harshness as it slams into his throat, fucks him raw. It’s so _fucking_ good, and Bucky feels almost like he’s pulling out of himself at the pleasure of it, as Steve face-fucks him into an almost out-of-body experience.

Letting out a kind of roar, Steve’s cock twitches, and he starts to come down Bucky’s throat. Bucky swallows at much as he can. The rest drools out over his lips, onto his chin, sloppy and messy and _good_.

When Steve is completely spent, he pulls slowly out of Bucky’s mouth. Gazes headily down at him while Bucky licks up the mess on his cock first, and then his own mouth and chin.

“So good,” Steve purrs, the hand in Bucky’s hair relaxing, stroking instead of gripping now. “That’s my sweet boy.”

“Yes, sir.”

And while Bucky is still in the process of melting at the praise, at hearing how good he was for his favorite person in the whole entire world, suddenly he’s being thrown backwards as Steve tackles him to the ground.

Bucky only has time to let out a surprised grunt as he hits the floor before Steve’s hand is wrapped around his cock, jerking him off rough and fast while Steve’s beard scratches at his throat. And then teeth scrape over his pulse point, biting down hard, and Bucky shouts at the sensation. It’s all so much, too much, too _good, oh fuck!_

Steve bites his way down Bucky’s neck, across his collarbone, leaving marks and bruises and beard burn as his fist flies over Bucky’s cock, as the overstimulation crosses from pain to beautiful fucking pleasure, pulling him right to edge in a matter of fucking _seconds_ , it feels like, and Bucky is shouting, and moaning, and _coming, Jesus fuck!_

Steve’s mouth presses hot, open kisses against Bucky’s jaw as his cock spurts between them, his body pressing and holding Bucky down, keeping him tethered, keeping him safe.

It’s possible Bucky actually blacks out for a minute, because the next time he feels fully aware, Steve has moved down his body, and is licking up the cum Bucky released onto his own chest and stomach.

“ _Fuck_ ,” Bucky groans at the sight. Steve glances up at him, laving his tongue over Bucky’s filthy abs, and smirks.

He finishes cleaning Bucky up with his own mouth before he crawls back up to kiss Bucky’s lips. Soft, at first, and then deeper. More. Bucky can taste his own release in Steve’s mouth. He wonders if Steve can taste his in Bucky’s.

“I fucking love you,” Steve murmurs, their lips brushing. “You’re so fucking good for me, baby.”

Bucky hums and smiles, pleased. “Love you,” he agrees, his voice rough from being fucked down his throat, and slurring from having an intense fucking orgasm ripped out of his body like that.

Steve chuckles and sits up, pulling Bucky up to lift him into his strong arms, like Bucky weighs nothing at all. Bucky definitely weighs something, but Steve doesn’t seem to know that.

Bucky finds himself gently laid on the bed, the covers pulled up to his chin, as Steve presses a kiss to his forehead.

“Be right back,” he promises. Bucky nods, letting his eyes flutter shut.

He might doze off while Steve is gone, because it feels like only a moment later that there’s a warm, wet washcloth wiping gently at his face, then his chest and stomach, and then his soft cock. Steve leaves kisses everywhere the washcloth goes, laughing when Bucky gives a quiet little gasp at the kiss Steve leaves on his dick.

The bed dips as Steve climbs in with him.

“Come here, sweetheart,” Steve murmurs, pulling Bucky around until he’s half sat up, his back leaned against Steve’s chest, eyes still closed peacefully. The lip of a water bottle is pressed to his lips, and Bucky drinks obediently.

“Do you want me to get you some tea for your throat?” Steve asks him softly.

Bucky shakes his head, finally opening his eyes again. “Want you,” he mumbles unhelpfully.

But Steve seems to understand, and kisses his temple. Something else is pressed to Bucky’s lips, and he opens his mouth so Steve can slip a piece of chocolate inside.

“Read t’me?” Bucky asks as he chews on the sweet chocolate, enjoying the sensation as it melts on his tongue.

Steve’s lips press into his hair. “‘Course, honey,” he replies.

Bucky scootches down to settle under Steve’s arm, and rest his head against Steve’s broad chest. Steve cuddles him close, and picks up the book he’s been reading to Bucky after scenes like the one they just had. It’s one of Bucky’s favorite forms of aftercare — being cuddled as his husband’s deep, rumbling voice reads to him. Steve runs fingers through his hair, kissing his head between sentences.

They’ve been like that for a while — how long, Bucky couldn’t tell you, but it’s long enough that he’s a little more alert and aware now — when there’s a solid knock on their door.

Bucky whines when Steve climbs out of bed to pull some clothes on and go get the door, but Steve gives him one more kiss right on his mouth, and that placates him for the time being.

A minute of Bucky just lying sprawled across Steve’s warm spot on the bed later, Steve comes back with a kind of adorable, confused golden retriever expression on his face.

“There are visitors for us?” Steve says, framed like a question. Bucky’s frown probably mirrors Steve’s, except it’s presumably grumpier and more catlike, because that’s just how Bucky comes across, he’s self-aware enough to admit.

Bucky gets dressed, and they both make sure to take off their rings and slip them into their pockets. As they head further upstairs, to where the messenger directed them, Steve holds Bucky’s hand.

“Ah, good,” T’Challa says as they reach the floor of the palace that contains the throne room, as well as a few war rooms, “you are here.”

He leads them both down a wide corridor and into one of the war rooms, where a small group of people are waiting around the circular table inside.

Steve and Bucky both stop short at the same time, as soon as they’ve entered the room.

Because it’s not just a group of people. It’s a group of people that both of them _know_.

Bucky spots Sam first, and Clint beside him. Then he catches sight of Tony Stark, a blonde woman who he doesn’t personally know, but who Steve seems to, and then, right at the head of the room, a shock of red hair and familiar green eyes.

Natasha.

🎈

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Folks, we are OFFICIALLY in our final week of posting! With only four more full chapters and one epilogue left in this story, we're gearing up for the finale. I can't believe we're so close to the end! I've been working on this story since August of 2019, and the idea that it's almost done is so crazy to me.
> 
> Bucky's breakthrough in this chapter is super personal for me, in ways I definitely did not expect when I started writing this fic. ❤️
> 
> **Next time:**  
> 


	23. Twenty-Three: January 24th

“What the fuck are you guys doing here?” Steve asks, stunned, as all of his friends stand up from the table to greet him with hugs, one by one.

Sam and Nat hug Bucky, too. Steve knows this, because he’s got one eye on Bucky the entire time his friends are greeting him. Nat hugs Bucky a little longer and harder than she hugs Steve, he notices.

Clint claps Bucky on the shoulder, and Tony shakes his hand, an uncontained smile splitting his face. Then Carol turns from Steve to Bucky, and smiles at him, letting him take the lead.

“I’m Carol,” she offers when he reaches out to shake her hand. “I’m a friend of your boyfriend’s.”

“Husband’s,” Bucky corrects her, grinning rakishly at Steve when his and everyone else’s heads all snap to look at him, eyebrows raised high in surprise.

Bucky just gazes at Steve, so much love glittering in his eyes, as though no one else were here at all, and shrugs. “They don’t know Becca,” he explains simply. “There’s no thunder to steal.”

Steve’s smile spreads slowly across his face. It hurts his cheeks in its fullness. “All the same,” he says, addressing everyone, but not taking his eyes away from Bucky’s, either, “most of Bucky’s family doesn’t know yet, so we’d appreciate you all not mentioning that in front of anyone outside this room.”

The room _erupts_.

Carol and Sam give their heartfelt and enthusiastic congratulations while Clint delightedly cries out, “You got _married?!_ ” Nat doesn’t say anything, but Steve catches the way her eyes gleam as she takes Bucky’s hand and squeezes it between both of her own, pressing it to her chest while Bucky beams down at her, his own eyes alight as well. Tony just laughs. Loud, and booming, and _happy_ , he laughs.

In all the ruckus, Steve watches Bucky’s smiling eyes return to meet his, and in that moment, Steve feels complete. He’s married to the most wonderful human on the planet. Bucky is happy and well. Steve’s friends are here, laughing. And they know. They know that Steve got to marry the love of his entire life, that he loves Bucky to the heavens and back, that he’s happily given this amazing man his whole life.

There’s nothing else he could want. Not one thing.

He forgets, for a moment, why they’re all here at all.

It’s Nat who reminds him.

Quietly, and somehow without popping the sparkly bubble they’ve found themselves suddenly inside at Bucky’s utterance of the word, ‘husband,’ Nat manages to get them all back in their seats. She sits at the head of the wide, round table, next to T’Challa, with Sam on her right. Beside him sits Clint, then Tony, Carol, and then Steve, with Bucky between him and T’Challa, one thigh warm and solid under Steve’s palm.

“To answer your earlier question, Steve,” Nat says, a glint in her eye, when quiet falls among them, “we’re here because I’ve figured it out.”

Steve glances at Bucky, who has his own eyes narrowed at Nat, calculating.

“Figured what out?” Bucky asks her, and her smile turns predatory.

“How to bring them down,” she says, voice low and dark. “We’re going to burn those bastards to the fucking ground.”

Bucky’s eyes widen. Steve’s eyebrows shoot back up to his hairline again. “Hydra?” he asks, though the answer is obvious.

Still, Nat nods. “But first things first,” she begins cryptically, turning to address Bucky directly. “Something about this has felt wrong this entire time, hasn’t it?”

“Yes,” Bucky replies immediately and emphatically, like this has been bothering him for a while. “Rumlow didn’t know I was even in New York, let alone that I was dating Steve, so what the hell was he doing at the office of my boyfriend and my ex? Why did no one seem to know _you_ were there? How the fuck did they know we’d be in Toronto when we got there? _Nothing_ about this has made sense, not knowing what we know about them.”

Natasha has been nodding in response to all of Bucky’s questions, and when he finishes, she nods again. “It hasn’t made sense,” she answers, “because we’ve been asking the wrong questions.”

Bucky frowns, and waits for Nat to continue. But her eyes slide from him to Steve.

“They weren’t in New York for you, Yasha,” she says quietly. “That’s why they didn’t know you were there. Rumlow was in our office because of _Steve_.”

Everyone’s eyes turn to Steve. He just blinks as his brain struggles to process what Nat’s saying.

“I don’t understand,” Steve admits stiltedly, and turns to Bucky, who looks surprised, but not flummoxed, the way Steve feels.

“Rumlow worked with you when you were a cop,” Bucky says, talking to Steve, but sounding more like he’s trying to work it through himself. And indeed, understanding dawns over his face. “Oh my god, they’ve been trying to get you.”

“Rumlow has been ‘consulting’ at the Initiative almost exclusively with a writer named Jasper Sitwell,” Nat explains. Bucky looks back at her, frowning again. “You wouldn’t know him,” she tells him before he can ask. “I didn’t either. He’s from a different faction, and as far as I know, he was never at our base. But he’s Hydra. He ingratiated himself at the Initiative right after Steve started working there, and he brought Rumlow in as a ‘consultant.’ I never met Rumlow when we were in, they were careful about that, but he’s high enough up in Hydra that I’m told he _did_ know who I was when he saw me at the Initiative.”

“Why—?” Bucky starts, but then cuts himself off. And then, bafflingly, he and Nat both look back at Steve.

“What?” Steve asks dumbly, feeling like he’s missing something huge here. What do they mean, Hydra was trying to ‘get’ him?

“Rumlow didn’t make an effort to take me back,” Natasha tells Steve slowly, “because of you.”

“I don’t know what that means,” Steve says. “Why would I be a factor in that at all?”

“They wanted to recruit you,” Bucky tells him. “I’m kind of an exception, they don’t generally recruit through kidnapping. They would want to convince you of it. Get you on board with the cause. _Maybe_ threaten you, if that didn’t work out for them.”

“But they wouldn’t be able to _convince_ you if they kidnapped me from under your nose,” Nat finishes the thought for Bucky, the two of them seamlessly passing this explanation back and forth between them. Natural partners. “You and I became friends as soon as you started at the Initiative, Steve, remember?”

Steve nods. That’s true. They took to each other instantly, bonded quickly, and have been very close ever since. They share a similar sense of humor, a similar view of the world in general. Steve may, at the surface, appear more optimistic than Natasha is, but in truth, he sees just as much mayhem and destruction as she does, and they’ve both chosen to fight it.

Bucky’s left hand settles on top of the one Steve has gripping his thigh, fingers curling around Steve’s hand as he gives it a comforting squeeze.

“Moving on Natasha would have tipped you off to them,” he explains softly. “You didn’t even know it, but you were protecting her.”

Steve blinks. “I’m sorry, I still don’t understand,” he says. “Why the _fuck_ would Hydra want to recruit _me?_ I left the force very dramatically, and I didn’t exactly make friends along the way.”

Nat smiles sympathetically. “Do you remember a man named Arnim Zola?” she asks.

“Yes.” Steve does remember Zola. Zola was a lieutenant colonel that Steve reported to in the army. He was unassuming, but brilliant. Steve never really clicked with him personally, but the man was undeniably a genius.

“He’s Hydra,” Nat tells him, almost like she’s breaking it to him gently. “Since the beginning.”

“He’s Swiss,” Steve says dumbly, and Bucky squeezes his hand again.

Nat looks at him kindly, but also like he might be kind of stupid. Which is fair. “Not all of the founding members were native Russians,” she says. “Zola knew Bucky’s grandfather and the other founders before they all created Hydra together. One of the foremost founders alongside Aleksandr Zimaev was a German man named Johann Schmidt.”

“Okay,” Steve huffs, losing patience, “I need you to tell me plainly what’s going on, and _why_ you think Hydra was after _me_.”

“I don’t _think_ they are, Steve, I _know_ ,” Natasha says. Everyone else has been silent this entire time, just letting her, Bucky, and Steve speak. Uncharacteristically so, for most of them. “And it’s not a past tense thing.”

“They kidnapped my husband!” Steve shouts. Too loud, but he can’t help it. “They hung him from the ceiling for three days! They threatened him, assaulted him, drugged him, and beat him! They think they can fucking _get me_ after _that?!_ ”

“I wasn’t actually your husband yet at that point,” Bucky points out, for some reason _smiling_ at him, and Steve turns to him wildly.

“You think that makes a _difference?”_ he demands, but Nat’s voice cuts through.

“Steve, Zola was impressed with you in the army, and he wanted your abilities to benefit Hydra,” she says frankly. “Once you went home, you were targeted by the Hydra units in New York, who were there infiltrating the US through the police force, which pretty much welcomed them in. They started trying to get you while you were a cop, and they didn’t stop when you left. Rumlow and Sitwell were there to recruit _you_ , when Bucky walked in. They didn’t even know he was in the States, let alone New York.”

“Oh my god,” Steve breathes, finally getting it. “It’s my fault. They wouldn’t have known—”

“Steve, stop,” Bucky cuts him off abruptly, just as Sam speaks up for the first time since they started, saying, “It’s not your fault, Steve.”

Bucky’s hand leaves Steve’s to instead grab hold of his chin, forcibly turning his face to look into Bucky’s eyes — darker today, and greener than usual. Steve is captured by those eyes, immobilized where he sits by their intensity.

“Putting this on yourself isn’t helpful,” Bucky tells him bluntly. “It’s not productive, and it’s not _true_. I may not understand why our lives are so deeply connected, but it’s not my fault that they targeted you, and it’s not your fault that they targeted me, okay?”

Steve wets his lips. He can’t say no to the conviction in Bucky’s eyes. So he nods. “Okay.”

Bucky nods back, then turns to Natasha again. “Is that how they knew where we were?” he asks. “In Toronto?”

“Yeah.” It’s Tony, not Natasha, who answers. Steve turns to look at him. “We had no idea they were going after Steve, so we didn’t vet or guard him as thoroughly as we did with you. I think they had a tail on him, and I think they managed to partially track you through him. We should have done better. I’m so sorry, Barnes.”

Bucky shakes his head, another ‘ _It’s not your fault_ ,’ though silent this time. He’s the most forgiving and generous person in the world to honestly believe that they didn’t fail him here.

They did. They failed him.

They won’t again.

“How did you know we were _here?_ ” Steve asks, turning back to Natasha as the thought occurs to him.

“Guilty,” Clint says, directly across the table from Steve, and Bucky nods, like he’s already figured that out. “Obviously, you know I was in Canada because you were. I was actually tracking Hydra’s movements for Nat, and when I saw they were converging in a town just outside Toronto, I figured they were there waiting for you guys, so I stuck around. Nat had just asked me to check in on you, but as soon as I realized they were planning on ambushing you, I had to warn you about it. While I was in your hotel room, I, uh—” He hesitates, but Bucky picks it up.

“You bugged it.” It’s not an accusation, just a fact, but Clint does look a little ashamed when he nods.

“But we _checked_ for bugs!” Steve protests. He feels overwhelmed by all of this.

Clint shrugs. “Mine are _really_ good,” is all he says.

Steve is still baffled, and struggling a lot to process all of this information all at once, but Bucky just nods like he accepts that answer, so Steve makes the choice to follow his husband’s lead.

“Okay,” Bucky says carefully, “so they found me because they were after Steve. They found _us_ because we didn’t know that. _You_ found us because Clint. What makes you think we can take them down?”

The question is addressed to Nat, and she grins like a shark again in response. “Carol,” she indicates, and nods across the table for Carol to speak.

“I don’t know how much Steve has told you about me, Bucky,” Carol begins her turn, smiling proudly. “I operate security for the Initiative, and I was in the Air Force. I have been known to assist with an investigation or two as well,” she adds, winking at Steve. “I’m _damn_ good at getting info no one else can find.”

Bucky nods for her to continue, and doesn’t speak. Steve follows his lead.

“It’ll take way too long to explain how,” Carol says, still speaking directly to Bucky, “but I have reason to strongly believe that Hydra has a record of your… _stay_ with them.”

Bucky’s eyebrows furrow. “What?” he asks weakly, suddenly shaken in a way he hasn’t been this entire time. “H—how? They wouldn’t— That would be—”

“There’s no electronic record,” Carol clarifies, somehow understanding that that’s at least part of what Bucky is stammering about. “My sources indicate that it’s all contained in a single leatherbound journal.”

“Everything?” Steve asks while Bucky just looks stunned. “How they took him, what they did to him?”

“ _Everything_ ,” Nat confirms. Steve looks back at her, at the pointedness in her eyes. “Or— _most_ everything. We don’t know if it includes all of the abuse he suffered from Rumlow specifically, but we’re fairly certain the broad strokes of even that are in there. He didn’t exactly act alone.”

Bucky’s gaze has become unfocused, just staring at the table in front of him. Steve glances over, and sees that T’Challa has reached out and placed one steadying hand on Bucky’s forearm over the table.

But Natasha looks significantly at Steve, and Steve understands.

If this book is real, and if they can get their hands on it, they’ll have proof that Hydra not only exists, not only works inside of the Russian government, but that they knowingly and intentionally crossed the border into a sovereign nation, and kidnapped someone under royal protection, committing an act of war.

“So this is it,” Steve says quietly, a rush of adrenaline sweeping through his body as he prepares for a fight he now _knows_ is coming. “If we go in and get that book, we can expose them.”

“Not just that,” T’Challa says, his voice quiet, but full of power and authority. “With this evidence, I, as king of Wakanda, will have what I need to finally call the Russian government to account for their crimes against this country. Either the government takes full responsibility for these crimes, or they sever their ties with Hydra, and prosecute all of its members. I have no doubt which option they will choose.”

“That’s why we’re here,” Nat says, addressing Steve, Bucky, and T’Challa now. “We’re your team. We’ll get the book, and we’ll take them down.”

“What about Gramps?” Bucky asks, eyes still unfocused on the table. “He won’t let anyone near that book.”

“He’s in New York,” Natasha tells him, and Bucky’s eyes snap up to hers. “He’s part of the infiltration scheme. Most of Hydra isn’t actively based in Russia anymore. It’s mostly just the training programs there now, almost all operatives are working to expand Hydra’s control over the world. They don’t want to be the fist of Russia anymore, they want to influence all of history.”

“But the book is in Russia?” Bucky asks. Nat nods. “I want to do it,” he says right away, turning from her to T’Challa, and then to Steve. “I want to get it, it has to be me.”

“Bucky—” T’Challa begins, but Bucky’s looking pleadingly at Steve like he’s asking for _his_ permission. Like he needs _Steve’s_ approval to take back his life. And Steve nods before he can think.

“I’ll go, too,” he promises Bucky instantly. Bucky’s eyes light up in the prettiest, most heart-wrenching look of hope Steve has ever fucking seen. “We’ll do it together.”

The rest of the group ends up agreeing to this without much pushback. Perhaps they came here expecting Bucky to want to finish this. Steve can’t say he’s surprised by Bucky’s conviction. Hydra took so much from him, and he learned how to rebuild himself, but if he can be the one who seals their destruction—

Well, Steve thinks that’s the very _least_ he deserves.

They spend another few hours there in that war room, going over and over and over every detail they know, every possibility they can imagine. They make plans. They confer. They work through every scenario, and every particular. And in the end, they have a plan of action, and a fight ahead of them.

Later that night, Steve lies on his back, and watches his unbelievably beautiful husband ride his cock, the long column of his throat exposed as Bucky lets his head fall back, his eyes squeeze shut, his mouth drop open. Little gasping breaths are the only sounds emanating from Bucky’s lips as he rocks himself on Steve’s cock, his fingertips touched lightly to Steve’s stomach, as Steve brushes his thumbs over Bucky’s peaked, sensitive nipples, and drinks in the sight of this gorgeous, lithe body that he adores, like he’s dying of thirst.

When Bucky leans back a little, and finally lets out a guttural moan, Steve plants his feet and takes over the pace, fucking up into his husband with something almost like brutality, claiming him, and reminding Bucky that he’s _here._ That he’s _Bucky’s_.

All it takes after that is Steve’s hand around Bucky’s cock, and Bucky’s whole body stutters as he comes, spurting warmth across Steve’s chest, and clenching around him so sweetly. Watching Bucky come apart like that, all for Steve, will never not be the hottest thing in the entire universe, and the sight draws Steve so close to his own release, that when Bucky pants, and leans down to lick his own cum off of Steve’s chest, Steve’s own orgasm crashes into him and blinds him.

While he comes back down, Bucky licks him totally clean, so Steve thinks it’s only fair to return the favor. He tips Bucky over onto the bed, and climbs between his legs to lap gently at his hole, the rim raw and swollen from the last hour of reckless attention. They fucked like they know they’re going to be walking through fire together tomorrow, like they desperately need to feel grounded in each other. But it was quiet, both of them unusually silent.

Steve kisses Bucky where he’s finished licking up his own release, and then kisses the crease of his hip, then the tip of his flushed cock, then just under his belly button. The spaces between his ribs. Both of his nipples, one at a time. The hollow of his throat. The cleft of his chin.

His soft, sweet lips.

Bucky’s fingers slide into Steve’s hair, and scritch at his scalp through the kiss. Their tongues slide languidly over each other, and when Steve sucks on his tongue, Bucky gasps.

“Steve,” Bucky whispers, their lips brushing over each other. “Steve. Steve.”

He doesn’t seem to want to say anything except Steve’s name, over and over. But eventually, Steve lifts his head, and gazes gently down at this wonderful man in his arms.

“I love you,” he breathes, because it’s true. It’s the only true thing. Steve loves Bucky. More than anything. More than everything.

“Steve,” Bucky whispers once again, like he’s savoring the taste of it in his mouth. Then he turns his shining blue eyes up to Steve’s with a deep and penetrating urgency, and says, “I need you to know that you have been the single greatest thing in my entire life. I _need_ you to know that, Steve. I can’t even describe to you the joy you’ve given me, or how much I _desperately_ love you.”

Steve’s eyebrows knit together as he cradles Bucky’s face in his hand, brushing his thumb over his cheek as Bucky leans into his touch. “You are not saying goodbye to me,” Steve tells him fervently. “You can’t do that, okay? We’re gonna do this together, and we’re gonna come out of it _together_ , you hear me?”

A tear spills onto Bucky’s cheek. Steve swipes it away quickly, panic sweeping through him, like if he erases it fast enough, he can undo it.

“Do you think you’re not coming out of this?” he asks Bucky wildly, his heart seizing in his chest. He cannot lose Bucky, he _can’t_. He won’t survive it.

But Bucky shakes his head. “No, that’s not it,” he says, still not speaking above a whisper, like this is secret. Like this can’t be spoken out loud. “I want to. I want it all to work out. But it’s dangerous. It’s so dangerous, Stevie. And I can’t go into it without _knowing_ that you know this. I couldn’t, in a thousand lifetimes, thank you enough for what you’ve given me.” Another tear spills over, this time on the cheek Steve isn’t holding fast, and his voice breaks when he says, “You’ve given me everything. Everything, Steve, it’s all because of you.”

“You know that’s not true,” Steve says. “You’ve done so much more for yourself than I could ever do for you.”

Bucky shakes his head again, though, so Steve falls silent.

“Steve,” Bucky breathes again, his name a song on his lips. “You’re everything to me. Absolutely everything.”

He’s trying so hard to make Steve hear, to make him understand. But Steve knows. He _knows_. Because Bucky may believe that Steve is the sun, but Steve knows that Bucky is the moon. Lovely, soft, and luminous. Comforting, and powerful, and true. Steve burns hot, and too bright, but Bucky shines steady. He casts the most beautiful, transformative light, and under his hand, the tides of Steve’s heart are turned, and turned, and lovingly turned.

So Steve ducks down, and catches Bucky’s lips and light again, kissing him soft and sure, their lips brushing, and pressing, and gently a promise.

And when he lifts his head again, it’s only to lean his forehead against his husband’s — the truest love he’ll ever know — and whisper, “I know, Bucky. I know, me too. You’re absolutely _everything_ to me, too.”

🎈

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **Next time:**   
> 


	24. Twenty-Four: January 25th

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> OH MY GOD IT'S HAPPENING!! IT'S ALL HAPPENING!!!
> 
> Once again, huge thanks to [need_more_meta](https://archiveofourown.org/users/need_more_meta) for checking and correcting the Russian in this fic!

The flight in the Royal Talon Fighter the next day is quiet, the atmosphere tense and charged. Bucky watches out the windscreen as Africa gives way to Asia through the clouds, a mass of green and brown that marks the miles of their journey closer and closer to a place Bucky has long hoped never to see again.

He supposes it shouldn’t have come as such a surprise to him that the book containing all of the information on his kidnap and torture by Hydra’s hands is reportedly still being kept exactly where they perpetrated all of that on him. For some reason, though, he’d thought — hoped, maybe — that they might be keeping it in one of the main bases of operation. In Moscow, maybe, or St. Petersburg. Volgograd, even. Chelyabinsk. _Anywhere_. Just not the place he can still, through all of the fog and the haze of drugs, brainwashing, and trauma, picture perfectly in his mind.

Steve, sitting next to Bucky in the other passenger seat, just behind the two pilot seats, reaches out without even looking at him, and takes his hand. It’s like Steve can just _feel_ Bucky’s nervous energy, emanating off of him like radio waves that Steve is specifically tuned to. Like he knows exactly when Bucky needs that extra anchor of touch from his husband. His hero.

Bucky glances over at Steve, who turns to look at him, too, smiles softly, and squeezes his hand.

Okoye and Carol are in the pilot seats, Bucky and Steve just behind them, and everyone else is further back, around the table on the right side of the plane, or seated at the control station on the left. T’Challa is stuck back in Wakanda, unable to risk crossing into Russia and causing an international incident when he needs leverage over them to eliminate Hydra. Shuri and Becca stayed home also, but are on comms with the team on the Fighter, running the base of operations from Wakanda. Bucky had to say goodbye to them, and to his parents, with the knowledge that this time, he really might not make it back. He’s trying hard not to think about that. His hands are shaking.

Seeing this, Steve jerks his head toward the back of the plane, raising his eyes in question. Bucky nods in response. Silently, they both unfasten their seatbelts, and head back toward the bathroom.

Natasha cocks an eyebrow at them as they go, from where she’s tucked under Sam’s arm, his fingers gently trailing up and down her arm as he goes over his notes about their mission yet again, but no one makes a joke about quickies, which, even not knowing most of these people terribly well yet, Bucky is surprised by. The anticipatory tension is perhaps just too strong to allow for lewd jokes right now.

Steve opens the bathroom door and enters, and Bucky follows him inside, closing the door behind them.

As soon as they’re alone together, Steve crowds into Bucky’s space, wrapping his arms around him and holding him tightly. He presses kisses upon kisses into Bucky’s hair, pulled back into a bun for the op.

“I’m here,” he murmurs in Bucky’s ear. “We’re all here for you. We’re gonna be okay.”

Bucky feels himself slump inside Steve’s strong hold. He allows himself, for just a moment, to release all of the tension he’s been holding on to. To let go, protected in his husband’s arms.

“I know,” he whispers back. Then, even quieter, he breathes a confession: “I’m scared.”

Steve nods. Kisses his cheek, the bridge of his nose. “I know,” he replies. “Me too.”

And then their lips meet. Softly, at first, just brushing, just pressing. Bucky’s mouth opens first, and Steve’s follows, deepening the kiss and teasing their tongues over each other. Bucky clutches at the back of Steve’s shirt, and Steve rubs his hands soothingly up and down Bucky’s sides.

Bucky loses himself in that kiss. Clinging to a moment he deeply fears he may never be given again. He could die out there. _Steve_ could die out there. Hydra could take him back, actually manage it this time. By all accounts, this base is all but abandoned, manned only by a skeleton crew to keep it secure, but Bucky can’t just trust that to be true. Not after everything he’s gone through because of these monsters. He just married the love of his life — found him after a lifetime, apparently, of missing each other. Bucky _desperately_ doesn’t want to lose Steve here, right as their life together is beginning.

He’s _scared_.

Eventually, though, as Steve’s hands pet gently over Bucky’s hair, and Bucky’s arms cling around Steve’s shoulders, they’re interrupted by Clint’s voice over the speaker.

“All right, folks,” he says, his usual jovial tone replaced by something low and dry, and mostly-serious, “Okoye tells me we’re coming up on our destination. Reminder: this is Siberia, make sure you put your coats on if you’ll be leaving the aircraft. We’ve got about ten minutes to drop, so if our fearless leaders would come on out of the bathroom for briefings, that’d be awesome, thanks.”

Bucky sighs, and starts to pull away from Steve, but Steve holds him still. When Bucky looks up into his deep, blue eyes, Steve fixes him with an intensely important look.

“Hey,” he says, his voice quiet, deep and rumbling against Bucky’s chest. “You are not a balloon,” Steve tells him earnestly. “You’re not going to float away. You’re not going to be forgotten. I’ve got you, okay? Always. And I know you’ve got me, too.”

“I do,” Bucky whispers back, the only thing he’s sure of. His heart flutters as Steve’s lips ghost over his cheek.

When Steve pulls back, he releases Bucky’s waist, only to cradle his face in both hands, kiss his mouth one more time. Too quick, but ardent.

And then all Bucky sees is blue.

“Let’s go get you your freedom, huh?” Steve asks, smiling softly.

Staring into eyes they’d never be able to burn out of his memory, no matter how hard they try, Bucky nods.

The others are standing when they leave the bathroom, waiting in a misshapen circle in the middle of the aircraft. All but Okoye, who remains in the pilot’s seat. Steve and Bucky join the circle, and everyone looks, not to Steve, or to Nat, like Bucky expects—but to him.

Eyebrows raised, Bucky glances at Natasha, who smiles at him.

“It’s your op,” she says simply, shrugging. “We’re all here for you.”

Bucky blinks. He’d…he’d _known_ that, sure, but— These are _Steve’s_ friends. Natasha is the only one who knew Bucky before Steve. They’re here to back him up, yes, but they’re here to back him up because they love Steve, because they love Natasha. They don’t even know him. But they want to follow _him?_ Into danger? Into the jaws of death?

Bucky looks around at all the eyes on him, and all he sees…is yes. Yes, they’re here for him. Yes, they’ll follow him.

It strikes at his chest, the trust, the faith they all have in him, to do this for _him_.

Bucky clears his throat, his eyes pricking with heat.

He takes a breath, shoulders the responsibility, the trust they have in him, and opens his mouth.

“You all know why we’re here,” he begins, looking at the faces around him, open to him. Trusting him. “Hydra is a cancer. All they want is power, destruction, and death. They _have_ to be taken out, and that’s fallen to us. Here. Today. Natasha and I are familiar with this area. We’ve lived these secrets. We’ll be on point. Natasha will lead the team outside; Sam, Carol, and Okoye, you’re with her. I will be going in, with Steve on my six. Clint, you’re our sniper, you’ll be posted outside in case someone tries to follow Steve and I in. Tony and Nakia will stay here on the Fighter to run ops, and Nakia will be on standby for medical.”

Everyone nods at this reiteration of the plan, while Bucky takes a breath. They’re all ready. Is he?

“This mission is incredibly personal for me,” he says, and tries to stop his voice from wavering. “I can’t tell you all how grateful I am that you’re here with me. This isn’t going to be easy. It’s going to be dangerous, and each of you is taking a huge risk doing this. If anyone wants to back out now — if you need to stay on the Fighter — I won’t fault you at all. This is _my_ fight. Mine, and maybe Natasha’s. You don’t need to do this.”

“We’re doing this, Bucky,” Sam cuts in firmly, and every other person on the team murmurs their agreement. “We know what we’re in for, and we’re here. We’ve got you.”

Bucky blinks again, trying hard to keep his eyes from welling up with it: the knowledge that these people, though they barely know him, are willing to die fighting for his freedom.

He swallows, and nods. “Okay,” he says with finality. “In a few minutes, you may find yourselves fighting for your lives. You’ll certainly be fighting for mine. Stay sharp,” Bucky orders, meeting eyes with each of them in turn. “Watch out for each other.” His eyes land on Steve’s, blue and green and beautiful. “And thank you.”

The circle breaks as everyone goes to arm themselves, and strap into the parachutes they’ll be taking to the ground. They can’t land the Fighter without attracting eyes, so they have to drop in, cloaked by darkness and the gently falling snow.

Tony walks around, passing out weapons he’s specifically engineered for all of them. Bucky takes the two pistols and sniper rifle Tony hands him gratefully, and then gets to work strapping himself up with the guns, ammo, and a selection of knives that he keeps mostly hidden underneath his black tac suit (provided to each of them by Shuri). He hasn’t been this armed in years. But strangely, though it feels weird to be back like this, there’s something oddly comforting about the familiarity. He doesn’t really have any desire to ever fight again, but if he has to — and today, he _has_ to — he’s glad for the well-known weight of his loadout.

Shortly before the jump, as Nakia takes control of the plane so Okoye can go strap in, Tony hands out earpieces to all of them as well.

“These should keep you in touch with everyone,” he says as he does. “There’s no reason the comm should go down. Just tap the side to talk, and don’t go offline. They’ve got trackers in them, so if you get captured, do everything you can to keep these on you.”

“Thanks, Tone,” Steve mumbles from behind Bucky as Tony gives him his. When Tony walks away to keep distributing the earpieces, Steve takes the opportunity to turn Bucky around by his shoulders, and wrap him in his arms. He buries his face in Bucky’s shoulder for a moment, pressing a soft kiss against his tac suit.

Bucky turns to press a kiss of his own to Steve’s temple. “I love you,” he murmurs into Steve’s hair. Then: “Take off your wedding ring.”

Steve leans back to frown at him. “I don’t want to,” he protests, and Bucky huffs a laugh.

“You know better than that,” he admonishes fondly. “If you want to keep the skin on that finger so you can continue to wear that ring for the rest of your life, like you promised, you gotta take it off now.” He grabs Steve’s left hand from behind his own back, and brings it to his mouth to kiss the aforementioned finger, right above his ring.

“Fine,” Steve huffs reluctantly. “Where did you put yours? I’ll put mine there, too.”

The corner of Bucky’s mouth tugs into a warm, crooked smile as he reaches under the collar of his tac suit, and pulls out the chain he’s wearing around his neck to show Steve the gold band dangling from it. Steve’s eyes glitter at the sight, looking down at the ring in wonder.

“I didn’t want to be without mine, either,” Bucky admits.

Steve’s eyes flick up to meet Bucky’s, and he darts forward to softly slot their mouths together. As they kiss, Steve brings his hands between them to slip his ring off his finger, then reaches back around Bucky’s neck, sliding his tongue into Bucky’s mouth as he does.

And as Steve kisses him, deep and slow, Bucky feels him undo the chain around his neck, and then Steve’s ring tumbles down the chain to rest with Bucky’s.

Covering both rings with his hand against Bucky’s collarbone, Steve presses one more chaste kiss to his lips, and pulls back to gaze lovingly in Bucky’s eyes.

“Keep it safe for me?” he whispers.

Bucky places his own hand on top of Steve’s. “Always,” he breathes his promise. A promise he will happily make over and over for the rest of his life. And they don’t have much time, but he can’t help himself from pulling Steve into just one last fierce kiss.

“Sixty seconds!” Clint calls out to all of them.

Bucky breaks from Steve’s mouth to look around at everyone. On the other side of the plane, Sam and Nat are wrapped around each other, having a moment quite similar to Steve and Bucky’s, it seems, despite Nat’s aversion to all things that could be considered a public display of affection. Dropping into a fight that could cost one or more of them their lives seems to be an exception for her. Nakia is piloting the Fighter. Okoye is adjusting Carol’s parachute. Tony is giving Clint some final instructions on his sniper rifle.

Bucky tucks his chain back into his tac suit, both his and Steve’s rings nestled warm against his skin, and grabs the last two parachutes — handing one to Steve before fastening on his own — then dons his fingerless leather gloves.

In the seconds before the jump, just as the door at the back of the plane starts to open, Bucky turns around to meet eyes with each member of his team one more time. Not trusting himself to speak right now around the lump in his throat, he nods to them all. Every single one of them nods back.

And then the door is open, the wind whipping around them all, dragging a few curls out of Bucky’s careful bun. Bucky looks out into the dark, open sky, dotted with snowflakes—

—and jumps.

His stomach drops painfully at the initial feeling of plummeting, but it’s not long before that feeling fades into something closer to flying. He’s focused on the task at hand, so it isn’t until he’s pulled his chute, and suffered through the uncomfortable jerk of his descent’s speed being drastically slowed all at once, that he finally looks up and around.

Steve is close by, and almost level with Bucky — he must have jumped only a nanosecond behind him. Nat is a little above them both, with Sam just beyond. The others are there, too, but Bucky can’t make them out individually at this distance, through the falling snow. If they jumped in the right order, that should be Carol past Sam, then Okoye, and finally Clint, just pulling his chute now.

They all land, as planned, among the sparse crop of trees about a mile outside the Hydra base. As they each make their landings, they take off their deployed parachutes, bundling them up to hide them all in a snow-buried pile in case someone is patrolling out here. And then, silently, they group together.

Bucky doesn’t risk speaking out here, even though they’re far enough away from the base that he likely could. It’s still a risk that he’s not willing to take. Picking up his rifle from where it hangs from the strap over his chest, he motions for them all to follow him and Natasha, who walks up next to him and nods. The two of them move forward through the trees, leading the rest toward the camp they both know all too well.

The snow muffles any sound their movements might make, but it will leave an obvious clue that they’re here. Bucky is just starting to worry about that when, almost as though the universe is joining their cause, as they walk, the snow begins to fall heavier, covering their tracks as they go.

When the trees are about ready to give way to cinder block buildings, both housing and tactical, Natasha and Bucky stop simultaneously. Bucky switches on the thermal scope on his rifle and scans around for warm bodies. Finding none, he glances at Natasha, and jerks his head toward the camp.

She nods, and waves her team forward. Sam, Okoye, and Carol all follow her into the base, disappearing quickly from view. The four of them will be circling the camp, taking out any operatives they can find, and setting explosives as they go.

They do not intend to leave anything behind tonight.

Bucky keeps moving along the tree line, Steve and Clint right behind him, flanking him, until he reaches the place he’s looking for. Another look through the thermal scope shows there are still no people around, so he points Clint toward the guard tower next to them. Clint just nods back at him before running toward it, still ducked in a crouch. Bucky doesn’t even look at Steve — can just feel his presence with him — before he breaks the cover of the trees, too, darting toward the ammunition bunker beyond the tower. Steve is right at his heels.

Honestly, Bucky could do without ever entering another bunker of any kind again, but at least this side of the base is one he doesn’t have a great deal of memories connected to. He only came here to arm himself before missions. The other side of the base is where he lived — or, really, where he was imprisoned in a house by Crossbones. Somewhere a few streets over is where they kept him locked up and drugged when they first brought him here. A mile to his left is where they trained him. And all the way down, past the camp entirely, in another line of trees, is where he first kissed Natasha. His first act of rebellion. The beginning of learning how to take back his own life.

He’s taken so much of it back.

Tonight, he’ll take the rest.

The codes are all different now, of course, but they always underestimated him, Bucky recalls as he easily hacks into the keypad and unlocks the bunker’s doors. He and Steve silently slip inside.

The fluorescents in here are only partially lit, casting the entire place in a dim, flickering light. The walls are too thick for the thermal scope to be very useful in detecting anyone who isn’t already right in front of them at the moment. Bucky keeps his rifle up as they sidestep quietly down the hall, backs to the walls.

The first large room they come to, Bucky scans around with his thermal scope again, nodding the all clear to Steve when it still turns up no heat signatures strong enough to be a human.

Over the comm, Sam’s voice grunts out, “Hostiles, ten o’clock.”

Then, a moment later, Carol’s voice. “Not anymore.”

“Thanks,” Sam laughs, and the line goes quiet again.

Steve follows Bucky into the large storage room, filled floor-to-ceiling with nothing but guns and ammo. The book is supposed to be in a locked desk drawer in the office of Hydra’s foremost founder, Bucky’s grandfather. Bucky knows the office is downstairs, but that’s about the extent of his memory of the subject. So he and Steve both stop, uncertain, when they get all the way through the large storage room only to find two separate doors leading off to two different staircases.

Steve looks at Bucky for direction, but Bucky shrugs.

“I don’t remember,” he admits in a whisper. “They didn’t bring me down here very often.”

Steve nods. “Okay,” he whispers back. “Split up? We’ve got the comm open. Just don’t do anything without backup.”

Bucky bites his lip, hesitant to split up. But by all appearances, they’re alone in here. If there was someone guarding the bunker from the inside, they’d have already met them. So he relents.

“Okay. _Nothing_ without backup!”

“I swear,” Steve says, then gives Bucky a quick kiss before he starts heading down the right-hand staircase.

The stairwell is a little tight for the rifle, so as Bucky heads down the stairs on the left, he drops his rifle to hang on its strap, unholstering one of the pistols instead. He holds the gun in his left hand, and unsheathes a knife with his right. As he reaches the bottom, he flips the knife in his fingers, closing his fist around the hilt, and crossing his right wrist underneath his left.

He peeks around the corner at the bottom of the stairs before he starts down the hallway there. This floor is oddly similar to a corporate office for being held in an underground bunker. The hallways are lined with cubicles. Bucky checks each and every one before moving past it in case someone is hiding in any of them, but no one is here.

No one is _anywhere_.

Many of the cubicles are completely empty — no computers, no chairs, nothing. Natasha did say this base is only very sparsely populated these days. Not like it was when Bucky was held here.

Still. It’s eerie. It feels wrong.

A sharp pain in his thigh wrenches Bucky violently out of his thoughts, and he spins around instinctively, throwing his elbow out as he does. But his attacker ducks easily under his arm, ripping the knife from his leg and darting behind him again.

Bucky recognizes these moves. They’re the same ones Natasha used pretty much exclusively when she first showed up at this base. Bucky was the one responsible for expanding her repertoire, he _knows_ these moves. Which means one thing.

Bucky tosses his knife to his other hand, catching it with his last two fingers, and holding onto his pistol with the other three. At the same time, he reaches behind himself, not even bothering to turn around first, knowing he won’t be fast enough if he tries, and closes his hand around a very small wrist, yanking its owner back to stand in front of him. He only winces a little at the expected slice he receives to his side when his attacker tosses her knife to her other hand, too.

But Bucky spins her easily, pinning her arm behind her back, and hooking his leg around both of hers to prevent her from using them to get out of his grip.

And he was right. She’s a little girl, no older than ten, and probably closer to eight. Her knife is still in her left hand, and she’s fast, but as she goes to plunge it back in the thigh Bucky has holding her, he releases her wrist, and uses her predicted move of switching hands again — she’s clearly right-handed, and hasn’t learned enough yet to effectively work around that — to sweep both of her wrists into his one hand, twice the size of hers, and sharply pull them both up over her head as her knife clatters to the ground.

Here’s the thing about Red Room kids: they do not stop. They will use anything at their disposal to attack, even their own tiny bodies, even to their own harm. Bucky knows this, which is why he knows the only option he had here was to totally disarm her, and bodily restrain her.

But now he’s stuck. Because the second he lets go, or she manages to wriggle free, he’s in trouble. Also, he’d eat his own gun if that knife is the only weapon on this girl.

“ _What’s your name?_ ” he demands in low-pitched Russian.

“ _Fuck you_ ,” she spits back, her own voice high and jarringly childish.

“ _You want to get out of here?_ ” Bucky asks. “ _You want to live somewhere where your next meal doesn’t depend on killing your own friends?_ ”

Her struggling falters for only a moment, but it's enough for Bucky to keep going.

“ _You’ve heard of me,_ ” he says, because no doubt she has. “ _The Winter Soldier. Sound familiar?_ ”

The struggling stops again. Another thing Bucky knows about kids from the Red Room: their loyalty is bought through fear, and any rumors of people who got out or escaped are spread around like the measles. Natasha told him all of this when they were falling in love. Thing is, none of those rumors were ever true, and inevitably someone figured that out, and hope was crushed, again and again.

But then Bucky and Natasha _did_ escape. And about a year after they left, Natasha found a way to get back in touch with an ally of hers from the Red Room, and she made sure the kids there heard about the two of them.

So, when this little girl stops at the sound of Bucky’s call sign, something triumphant flashes through him.

“ _I’m going to let you go_ ,” he tells her calmly. “ _If you attack me again, I will make damn sure you don’t kill me. Do you understand?_ ”

The girl hesitates, but then nods.

“ _Out loud_ ,” Bucky commands.

“Da.”

He releases her.

For a moment, Bucky is braced and ready for her to attack him again. To whip out another weapon from somewhere he can’t see, and try to kill him. He’s prepared, in that terrible, heartrending moment, to be forced to kill her — this _child_ — so that she doesn’t kill him first.

But she doesn’t do any of that. No, instead, she turns around, and Bucky sees her face clearly for the first time.

She’s _tiny_. He guessed her at a small eight or nine, but she’s probably actually only seven years old. Her little face is framed by golden curls, and when she looks up at him with hopeful brown eyes, Bucky’s heart shatters.

“ _Winter Soldier! You can get me out?_ ” she asks breathlessly.

“ _If you do exactly as I tell you_ ,” Bucky tells her. He touches his earpiece. “Steve.”

No answer.

That’s not good.

“Steve, acknowledge.”

Nothing.

“Natasha?”

And still, silence. Bucky taps the earpiece a few more times as the little girl watches him blankly, waiting for instructions no doubt. He’s familiar with that expression, that trained, at-attention stance.

“Radio check,” Bucky says as a last-ditch effort. When that, too, is met with absolutely nothing, he gives up. Comms are down, at least for him. So he looks back down at the little girl.

“ _Your name_ ,” he requests again, and this time, she answers.

“Darya,” she says, then looks him over and corrects herself. “Dasha.”

Bucky tries not to let it show on his face how his heart lurches again. ‘Dasha’ is the diminutive form of Darya. She wants him to refer to her by a nickname. She fucking _trusts_ him, Jesus Christ.

“Dasha,” he repeats. “ _Go upstairs and hide. Do not come out until I come for you. Not for anyone else but me, understand?_ ”

Dasha frowns, but nods.

“ _If I need someone else to get you, I will send them with a code word,_ ” Bucky continues, because just in case he dies down here, he is still getting this little girl out. “ _They’ll say,_ ‘balloon,’ _okay?_ Na angliyskom. Balloon.”

Dasha nods again. “Balloon,” she repeats, heavily accented.

“Umnitsa,” Bucky praises her. “ _Now go. Quickly._ ”

Without another word, Dasha turns and runs, following orders. Bucky watches until she disappears around the corner. He doesn’t hear her footsteps on the stairs, but that honestly doesn’t surprise him. Remembering his stab wound, he quickly yanks some gauze out of one of the pockets in his tac suit, and ties it snugly around his leg. He can’t stay here and dwell on this girl’s plight, or on the knowledge that there are hundreds just like her. To save them all, he has to move forward.

So he moves forward.

This floor is deserted completely, and when Bucky makes it down another flight of stairs, it seems like this one is, too.

But then, way in the back, he finds it:

Aleksandr Zimaev’s office.

Bucky fully expects to have to pick the lock, or otherwise break in. But when he tries the door, it’s open.

That’s…suspicious. Bucky lifts his pistol and his knife a little higher, taking even more extra care to look around as he walks inside.

It’s a very large office. There’s a desk in the far corner, slightly to Bucky’s left, large and lavish, and behind it, a luxurious leather wingback. On the other side of that far wall is another door. Presumably some sort of closet, but Bucky’s not about to rest on that assumption. Half of the wall on Bucky’s right is just floor-to-ceiling filing cabinets, and on the wall with the door, facing the desk, rests an entire line of wooden chairs, like a corporate execution line.

Bucky sidesteps, his back to the walls, over to the door on that far wall, keeping his pistol trained as he throws it open.

It’s…a closet. A walk-in coat closet, devoid of anything except a few wire hangers, most of which are on the floor.

As Bucky sighs with relief, he suddenly hears his name echoing around the cinder block walls. He spins around, instantly recognizing his husband’s voice.

“Bucky!” Steve shouts again, closer this time.

“Steve!” Bucky calls back, and then all at once, Steve is right there, and Bucky has to quickly move his gun out of the way as his husband rushes him. Thankfully, Steve isn’t crazy enough to try to hug Bucky while they’re both holding firearms. Instead, he just clasps one big hand around the back of Bucky’s neck, and presses their foreheads together urgently.

“I didn’t realize the comms were down until I tried to tell you I hadn’t found anything,” Steve pants. “Then I tried to follow you, and I saw signs of a fight, and there was blood, I was worried—”

“I’m fine, baby,” Bucky assures him, tilting his face up to press one quick kiss to Steve’s lips. “I’ll explain later, but I’m totally fine. Let’s get that book and get out of here, huh?”

Steve smiles weakly. “Sounds like a plan.”

He presses one more kiss to Bucky’s lips, and goes back to the door to stand guard while Bucky goes to the desk.

Both of the top drawers have locks on them, so Bucky quickly searches through the others first, just in case their intel is wrong, or someone moved the book just slightly. When that turns out nothing, he sets to picking the lock on the top right-hand drawer.

It’s not difficult — not compared to the many, much more complicated locks he’s opened without too much trouble — but when the drawer is open, and Bucky rifles through it, he still doesn’t find the book.

“How’s it going?” Steve asks from the door.

“Nothing yet,” Bucky replies, starting to pick the lock on the other top drawer. “It’s not here,” he breathes, rifling a little frantically through the drawer, which houses a stack of papers that absolutely does not contain a leatherbound book.

“What?” Steve asks, spinning around to look at him. “It has to be.”

“It’s not,” Bucky says, tearing everything out of that drawer, and then the other, and then all of them, tossing everything on the floor. “It’s not here, Steve— _fuck!_ ”

“Do you think it could be in one of those filing cabinets?” Steve asks.

Bucky huffs. “Maybe,” he replies, but when he looks up toward the wall of filing cabinets, he freezes.

“Well, well,” says the man suddenly standing there, next to the open closet door, in a deep, smooth voice that never fails to stab Bucky through the heart, like the worst knife’s point he’s ever been pierced by. The god-awfully familiar man flashes a smirk across his wrinkled face, under a flop of greyed, lightly ginger hair. He lifts his hand, and in it, a red, leatherbound book with a black star emblazoned on the front. “You wouldn’t be looking for this, would you, James?”

Steve is rigid and motionless at the door, wide-eyed and glancing uncertainly to Bucky, who stands up straight and juts his chin defiantly.

“Hello, Grandfather.”

🎈

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> DUN DUN DUNNNNN
> 
> I didn't realize I was going to get to write a BuckyCap moment until I started writing this chapter, and when I wrote his speech, I cried. He's been through hell and back, and he's grown so much, and I love him!! 😭
> 
> **Next time:**  
> 


	25. Twenty-Five: January 25th

Aleksandr Zimaev’s lips curl into a hideous smirk.

“James,” he says in sardonic greeting, and jerks his head toward the open closet door. “Should have checked for hidden doors, shouldn’t you? I know we taught you better than that. And former-Detective Rogers,” he adds, nodding toward Steve.

Bucky glances over at Steve wildly. Unexpectedly, Steve is glaring right back at Bucky’s grandfather. He’s not confused by being addressed by this man at all. He looks _furious_.

“Hey, Commissioner Pierce,” Steve says, low and dangerous. “Gotta say, I did not expect to see you here.”

Bucky hears the hollow laugh as it rips harshly from his chest. “Of course,” he mutters, turning back to his grandfather. “Of _course_ that’s what you’ve been doing in New York. Not only are you infiltrating the US, you’re also pursuing a vendetta against the one person in the entire city I managed to fall in love with.”

“Always the dramatics,” ‘Commissioner Pierce’ says, rolling his eyes. “Not everything is about you, James.”

“Maybe not,” Bucky concedes, not even touching the fact that the man who ordered for him to be kidnapped and tortured for _seven years_ , because he was pissed off at Bucky’s _dad_ , is calling _him_ ‘dramatic,’ “but that book you’re holding sure is.”

Pierce — there’s something freeing about referring to the man by a name that has no connection to Bucky at all — narrows his eyes, still giving Bucky that sickening smile. A smile that melts away when Bucky raises his gun, pointing it right at his grandfather’s face.

“Put down the gun, James,” Pierce says, his voice lowering threateningly.

“Give me the book, Gramps,” Bucky counters, unswayed.

An unmistakable click sounds out in the room’s reverberation — the cocking of a gun. Bucky’s eyes flit down to the pistol at Pierce’s hip, pointed right back at him. He doesn’t need to look to know that Steve’s firearm is now aimed right at Pierce, too.

“Drop it, Rogers,” Pierce orders, though he doesn’t take his eyes off Bucky. Smart man. “Drop it now, or I kill him.”

There’s a moment’s hesitation, and then Steve’s gun hits the floor.

“Good man,” Pierce says. “Now kick it here.”

Steve does. His gun slides across the floor toward Pierce, and Pierce kicks it behind him.

Bucky can’t exactly blame Steve for complying. Their positions reversed, he’d do the same thing. But the barrel of Pierce’s gun is pointed at _Bucky_ , not Steve. And Bucky has fewer compunctions about risking his _own_ life.

“Your turn, James,” Pierce tells him. That smirk is back, but this time, his eyes are hard. Bucky slowly begins to smile. Pierce is scared. At least a little.

He’s scared of _Bucky_.

“Put the gun down,” Pierce repeats, “or I’ll—”

“You’ll what?” Bucky demands, laughing harshly again. “You know exactly what I’m capable of, Gramps. You _made_ me this way. Do you _really_ think you can pull that trigger faster than I can pull mine?”

Pierce cocks his head to the side, almost like he’s considering this. But it’s mocking. It sends a chill down Bucky’s spine, knowing, suddenly, that there’s something he’s missing.

“You’re probably right,” Pierce tells him, slow and drawling. Taunting. “I don’t know that I could.”

“Bet _I_ could, though,” another terrifyingly familiar voice says from the doorway.

Bucky doesn’t take his eyes away from Pierce, but he can see Rumlow in his peripheral vision, and he can see that Rumlow’s got his gun on Steve.

Steve, who will never be able to get his hidden pistol out of its holster before Rumlow shoots him square in the face.

“Oh dear,” Pierce taunts, singsong. “We seem to have found ourselves in a no-win scenario, haven’t we? At least you two have. You see, James, if you try to take me out, Crossbones here’ll put a bullet in your boyfriend’s brain. And if Steve tries to get rid of Crossbones—well, I’m sure he can figure that out, smart man that he is.”

Steve makes an involuntary, wounded noise at the threat on Bucky’s life.

Bucky wets his lips.

_Boyfriend_.

Interesting.

Pierce doesn’t know they got married.

Which means he wouldn’t know anything about the rings around Bucky’s neck.

Some half-baked idea forms in Bucky’s mind. It’s stupid — it’s _really_ stupid — but it’s…something. He knows Crossbones. Really well. He might be able to anticipate what the bastard’s going to do. And…well, it’s _stupid_.

But it’s something.

Bucky raises his hands, and spreads his fingers, bending slowly to place the gun on the ground. He kicks it toward Pierce.

“Now the rest,” Pierce commands in a growl. “I know you.”

Bucky sighs, but takes his sniper rifle off over his head, then unholsters his other pistol. He takes out all of his knives, sliding each weapon over as he goes. He might’ve tried to keep one or two, hidden as they are, if this were just him. But he won’t risk Steve. He’s never been willing to risk Steve. So he surrenders them all.

“Good boy,” Pierce says as the last knife skitters toward him. “Crossbones.”

Rumlow walks slowly inside, gun still leveled right at Steve’s face, and Bucky knows he’s coming over to restrain them both. He’ll start with Bucky, since they all know Steve won’t try anything with Bucky’s life on the line. And indeed, Rumlow walks right up behind Bucky, holsters his gun, and seizes Bucky’s arms, yanking them roughly behind his back.

But just as Rumlow reaches for his handcuffs, Bucky spins, elbowing him in the stomach as he goes. Steve cries out, and Rumlow goes for the knife in his belt, no time to go for his gun — just as Bucky expected. And when Brock Rumlow goes for his knife, Bucky knows full well that there’s one place he’s surely planning on burying it.

As though in slow motion, Rumlow stabs his knife toward Bucky’s throat. But Bucky is _used_ to this violent, abusive, _predictable_ fucker, and he twists backward—exactly as far as he needs to for the point of Rumlow’s knife to glance off of the rings hanging around Bucky’s neck.

Suddenly, just as the last few moments stretched on in slow motion, the next seem to happen in a single instant. Bucky falls back, landing hard on the ground, just as Steve gets his hidden gun out of his boot and shoots, hitting Rumlow square in the chest. And as Rumlow crumples, a second shot rings out, and Steve goes down with a grunt.

Bucky jumps to his feet, snatching Rumlow’s half-holstered gun from his twitching, gurgling, slowly dying body, and aims at Pierce’s head before he can get another round off.

“Fucking _try it_ ,” he spits as Pierce swings his pistol toward him again. “You wanna watch your brain matter splatter all over your expensive carpet? _Give. Me. The book._ ”

Pierce chuckles, dark and rough. “You’ve only got a few short minutes before your boyfriend bleeds out, James. Not nearly enough time to get him help. I can have him in surgery in _minutes_. Save his life. All you have to do is come back to us.”

“ _Fuck_ you!” Bucky shouts. “Stevie, you with me?” he calls behind himself, furious eyes locked on Pierce.

“Yeah,” Steve replies weakly, and coughs. It sounds wet. “Yeah, I’m here, honey. And I’m his _husband_ , fucker.”

Bucky feels his mouth twitch in a crooked smile. “That’s my baby,” he says proudly, and pulls back the hammer of his gun. “Honey, I’m gonna need you to put pressure on that, okay?”

Steve grunts the affirmative, and coughs again. Bucky won’t let it show on his face, not when he’s facing off against the monster responsible for ruining his entire life, but he’s fucking terrified. Adrenaline courses through him, and he takes a step forward.

“The book, Gramps,” he demands again, holding out a hand for it.

Pierce snarls, and his arm twitches — a clear tell that he’s about to shoot — so Bucky takes that option away from him, shooting him in the thigh instead.

Pierce screams at the shot, and hits his knees. But he doesn’t let go of the gun or the book, so Bucky takes another few steps, striding right up to him and shoving the scorching nozzle of Rumlow’s pistol directly in his ugly fucking face.

“I am not a killer,” Bucky snarls at his grandfather. “You tried to make me one, but that’s not who I am.”

Pierce’s eyes flick up to meet Bucky’s, the exact same shade of greyish-blue. He opens his mouth to get out another taunt, but Bucky has no intention of letting him finish ever again.

“But you shot my husband,” Bucky continues sharply. “And you _destroyed_ me. So, Gramps, I think I can make an exception for you.”

He pulls the trigger.

A shot this close, and right between those eyes that look far too much like Bucky’s — it’s grisly. Blood and tissue sprays everywhere. All over the walls. All over the floor.

All over Bucky.

He should probably be feeling something, shouldn’t he? He just killed a man — his _grandfather_ — not in battle, and not under brainwashing.

But all Bucky feels…is _relief_.

There’s a moment where the only thing he does is stare down at the bleeding mass that was once his grandfather’s head. But then Steve coughs again, and Bucky’s attention snaps to him.

Somewhere between standing over Pierce and dropping down beside Steve, Bucky loses Rumlow’s gun. Without even thinking about it, he’s pulling gauze out of his pockets and pressing it against Steve’s stomach, where he’s bleeding. A lot. He’s bleeding a _lot_.

“Steve,” Bucky murmurs, watching Steve’s unfocused blue eyes blink up at him, trying to focus on his face. “Stevie, baby, stay with me, okay?”

“Bucky,” Steve rasps. His lips, stained red with blood, twitch in a little smile. “You did it.”

“We’re gonna get outta here now, Stevie.” Bucky says, pressing down harder on Steve’s wound as blood quickly soaks through the gauze under his hands, squelches between his fingers. “Just like you said, huh? We’re gonna come outta this together.”

Steve reaches up, and brushes the tips of his fingers against Bucky’s jaw. Bucky can’t tell if the blood smeared over them is his, or Steve’s, or Pierce’s.

“I love you,” Steve whispers. “I love you so much.”

“ _Hey_ ,” Bucky snaps, because this sounds an awful lot like a goodbye. “Hey, no. _No!_ ” His panic rises in his voice as he tries to hold Steve’s gaze with his own, his hands still trying like hell to slow the flood of bleeding. “No, this is _not_ how this ends, Stevie. You and me, we got somethin’ good here, huh?” Bucky’s voice breaks. His throat feels thick and tight. “Against all odds, we made somethin’ good.”

“Yeah, honey,” Steve agrees sadly, and a tear falls from his eye, down his temple and into his hair, “we did.”

“Hey, _stop_ that!” Bucky orders. “You know this ain’t it, pal! Baby, look at me,” he says as Steve coughs up more blood. “ _Look_ at me, Steve!”

Finally, Steve’s eyes focus on Bucky’s.

“Sweetheart,” Bucky breathes, blinking through the blur of his own tears, “you saved my life ten years ago, you didn’t even know my name. Your best friend is one a’ the most important people in my life, and you met her _four years_ after she left me. We were born in the same hospital, lived in the same _building!_ ” Bucky laughs mirthlessly. “My fuckin’ bastard of a progenitor was the Police Commissioner who had a fuckin’ vendetta against you! Baby, we’ve been barely missin’ each other our entire fuckin’ _lives_ , chasin’ each other for _years_ , and you found me in a bar that I was in by _chance_. The entire goddamn universe really wants us to have a chance, my love, you _cannot_ leave me alone in the face of that, okay?” The tears spill out of Bucky’s eyes at last, landing on Steve’s chest as he sobs. “What am I supposed to do without you?!”

Steve nods weakly, his fingers coming to rest over Bucky’s, still pressing down on his stomach wound. “Okay, Bucky,” he breathes. “Okay.”

“Come _on_ , honey!” Bucky weeps. “You are _not fucking dying_ _here_ , do you copy?!”

Another wet, bloody cough forces its way out of Steve’s lungs, but then he smirks. “Yes, sir,” he tells Bucky softly. “I copy.”

Bucky gasps through his tears. He can beg Steve not to go, but what power does he really have here, with no comm and no way to get Steve out, to save his life?

He leans down, sobbing, and presses his lips to Steve’s forehead. Tastes the metallic of someone’s blood.

“I love you so much, Stevie,” Bucky whispers desperately. “Please don’t leave me here, please.”

“Come on, honey,” Steve replies, so fucking weak, an echo of what Bucky just said to him. “‘M not goin’ anywhere, Buck. Love you s’much.”

“Damn it,” Bucky hisses. “ _Fuck_ , what do I—?”

He stops short, because he just heard something. Something that sounded an awful lot like—

“ _Bucky? Steve!_ ”

“In here!” Bucky screams out the office door at the sound of Natasha’s voice. If he wasn’t already weeping, he’d start right now. “We’re in here! Steve’s hurt!”

Natasha comes bursting into view, two guns, one in each hand, held up and ready. She’s followed immediately by Carol, Sam, Clint, Okoye, and…Nakia.

“He’s hurt,” Bucky tells them all again, helplessly, looking up at them and feeling like a little kid for all that he can do here.

“Let me see,” Nakia says gently, knelt down on Steve’s other side. And for anyone else, Bucky might not let them.

But this is Nakia. Bucky’s known her almost his entire life.

He lets her take his hands off of Steve’s stomach.

Quickly, Nakia places a Kimoyo bead — a small, rounded ball of healing Kimoyo technology — into the bullet hole in Steve’s body, then covers it with fresh gauze. As she tends to him, putting all of his faith in her hands, Bucky looks up at the rest of them.

He’s surprised to see Sam kneeling next to him, but he accepts the comforting hand Sam lays on his shoulder, despite the blood and guts Bucky is drenched in. Carol and Clint are at the door, on guard. Okoye is sweeping the room. She disappears into the closet for a minute, and Bucky vaguely assumes she’s found the secret entrance there. Natasha—where is Natasha—?

Oh. Natasha is standing over Pierce’s mangled body, staring down at it with the utmost contempt. Pure hatred is burned into her expression. And Bucky suddenly remembers—

“The book!” he gasps. But Natasha turns to him and holds it up, already in her hand.

“I think it’s all right,” she tells him. “Only a little blood on the cover, nothing on the pages.”

Bucky nods, lost for words. Nat looks back down at Pierce.

And spits on his body.

That done, she turns, and walks over to Rumlow — fully dead now, it seems, staring lifelessly up at the ceiling. “You got him, too?” she asks Bucky, gesturing at the body.

“Steve did,” Bucky tells her.

“Good,” she replies firmly, then spits on Rumlow, too.

“We need to get him to the Fighter,” Nakia says, and Bucky whips around to Steve again. His eyes are closed now, and he’s pale. Not coughing anymore. Bucky has no idea if that’s good, or if it’s very, very bad.

“Is he—?”

“He’ll be fine if we can get him to the Fighter,” Nakia tells him, and stands.

Carol and Sam lift Steve between them, and Okoye leads the way out, Clint and Nakia following just behind. As the group leaves the office, Nat holds out her hand to help Bucky to his feet.

“I’m covered in—” he protests, but Nat interrupts him.

“I know,” she says. “Come on, baby. Let’s go.”

Bucky takes a breath. He feels unmoored. Stunned.

He takes Natasha’s hand.

“How did you know to come?” Bucky remembers to ask as Natasha guides him up the first flight of stairs.

“After the comms went down, your friend came and found me,” Nat answers. “Said she heard gunshots, and I needed to help you.”

Bucky frowns, perplexed. “My friend?” he asks. But then they reach the top of this flight of stairs, and a little face, haloed with blonde curls, greets him. “Dashenka?”

Dasha grins.

“She’s the only child on base,” Nat says. “We checked.”

“ _I told you to hide!_ ” Bucky tells Dasha in Russian, but he hears no admonishment in his voice.

Dasha points at Natasha. “Chernaya Vdova!” she cries in explanation.

Black Widow.

Of course.

Bucky smiles weakly at her, and reaches out for her hand. Despite the blood and viscera he’s covered in, she takes it at once, walking along beside him the way a child her age should.

When they finally make it out of the ammunition bunker, the Royal Talon Fighter is just outside. Natasha helps Bucky and Dasha on, and then takes charge of getting Dasha settled, while Bucky rushes to the gurney they’ve laid Steve out on.

Nakia and Tony are working on him, tending to his wounds and taking his vitals.

“Hey, pal,” Tony greets Bucky softly while he works, “you hurt?”

“No,” Bucky replies. “I mean—yeah, but not— Is he okay?”

“He will be,” Tony tells him. “We just gotta get him patched up. Why don’t you go take a shower, and by the time you’re out, he’ll be stable, okay?”

It’s a clear dismissal. A very kind, polite, _‘Get the fuck out of the way_.’ But Bucky only steps back, feeling lost. Hands — Natasha’s again — guide him toward the bathroom, and she turns on the water for him and finds him a towel and a spare pair of sweats. She quietly tells him, “You’re okay now, Solnishko.” And then shuts him inside.

Bucky strips, and climbs into the shower, fingering the rings around his neck. There isn’t a scratch on either of them, not a dent. He wonders if they’re made of a golden-hued vibranium.

He stands under the scorching hot spray, watching blood and tissue wash out of his hair, and run down the drain.

And, at last, it hits him.

He’s free.

Without his grandfather at the helm, what does Hydra care about him? With Brock Rumlow dead, who would hunt him down?

And they got the book. T’Challa has what he needs.

Bucky’s _free_.

Once his skin is red from the scorching water instead of the blood, and he’s washed himself, finally, clean, and then sat on the toilet lid and stitched up his own leg because he doesn’t want anyone to be paying attention to _his_ wounds when they should be paying attention to _Steve’s_ , Bucky pulls on the sweats Nat laid out for him, and walks back out.

Steve is still on the gurney, parallel with the back of the plane, but he’s been cleaned of the blood on his hands, arms, and face, and Nakia and Tony aren’t hovering over him anymore. In fact, Nakia is back up at the helm, leaving only Tony waving some handheld device over Steve’s stomach.

“How is he?” Bucky asks quietly as he comes up to Steve’s other side.

Tony looks up at him, and smiles.

“He’s fine,” he says, and Bucky lets out a whoosh of air in relief. “He’s just sleeping. Wakandan tech is _incredible_ , you know that?”

Bucky smiles, and nods. “Yeah, it is.”

“Well, he should be good as new in no time, really,” Tony says. “I’m done here, you can—” He waves toward Steve, and then makes himself scarce, not bothering to finish his sentence.

With this many people on board, it’s not like there’s a ton of room in this aircraft. Everyone has given Bucky and Steve as much space as they can, but there’s not a lot of places they can go. So, while Bucky sits down on the open end of the alcove’s bench seat, Sam and Nat are only a few feet away from him on the other side of the table. Tony is settling into one of the seats right behind the pilot seats, next to Nakia, while Okoye gives a very excited-looking Carol instruction on how to fly the Fighter. And Clint is sitting at the control station with Dasha, chatting with her in Russian, a language Bucky wasn’t even aware he spoke.

But it doesn’t matter, really. As he sits beside his sleeping, healing husband, watching this gorgeous, perfect man’s chest rise and fall with his breaths, Bucky is totally okay with being surrounded by all of these people. These good people.

Bucky unclasps the chain from his neck, pulling his ring off of it before he clasps it back on. He promised to keep Steve’s ring safe for him, and he will, until Steve can take it back. He slips his own ring onto his finger, right where it belongs, and then reaches out and takes Steve’s hand.

Steve is going to be okay. And Bucky is free.

He leans forward, resting his head on Steve’s gurney, next to his hip. He presses his lips to the back of Steve’s warm hand.

For the first time since he can remember, as Bucky drifts off against his husband’s warmth, he feels totally and completely at peace.

🎈

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> They did it!! Can you believe we only have one more chapter and the epilogue left?
> 
> **Next time:**   
> 


	26. Twenty-Six: January 26th

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Happy belated Thanksgiving to everyone in the US, and apologies for the delay in posting this chapter. We had both a national holiday AND my partner's birthday yesterday and I could not get this chapter up before I conked out from exhaustion.
> 
> This is IT! Tomorrow is the epilogue, and then it's done! I can't believe it!!

It’s the soft sound of music playing nearby that first wakes Steve from his sleep. His eyes flutter open to a hospital room much like the one Bucky was in when they first arrived in Wakanda.

Wakanda. They must be back.

It all starts drifting back into Steve’s memory. The mission. The fight. Pierce. Pierce is Bucky’s _grandfather?_ Rumlow. Rumlow attacking Bucky. Shooting Rumlow dead. Getting shot himself. Bucky killing Pierce. Bucky, covered in blood, hands pressed to Steve’s stomach, begging and ordering him not to die.

Steve sniffs and looks around, his eyes falling almost immediately on the wonderful, radiant, remarkable man sitting beside him.

Bucky is wearing his glasses. He’s so fucking gorgeous. He’s got his curls all piled up on the crown of his head, he’s holding a coffee cup in his right hand, and his wedding ring is on his finger.

He smiles.

_**art** : Bucky, cozy in a sweater and wearing his wedding ring, gazing lovingly at Steve; **art by** : ArtDiwey_

“Hey, sunshine,” Bucky says as Steve smiles back at him.

“Hi,” Steve says back, his voice a deep, rasping croak. “You saved me.”

Bucky’s smile widens, crinkling his eyes. “Yeah, well,” he replies, leaning forward and lacing the fingers of his free hand around Steve’s, “it was my turn.”

Steve snorts, and Bucky chuckles back, and squeezes his hand. He sets his coffee cup down on the little end table next to Steve’s bed, right next to the little speaker he’s got connected to his Stark phone, piping out that soft, pretty music. Then Bucky rises to his feet, just so he can lean over Steve, his hand braced next to his head, and press a soft, gentle kiss to his lips.

“How long have I been out?” Steve asks when Bucky pulls back to gaze lovingly down at him.

Bucky’s fingers brush through Steve’s hair, an unrelenting tenderness in his eyes. He looks lighter than Steve has seen him in a long time. Maybe lighter than Steve has _ever_ seen him.

“Not long,” Bucky answers. “It’s almost four in the afternoon, we got back about eleven hours ago. They got the bullet out non-invasively, and you’re all stitched up. Plus,” Bucky adds, grinning, “Nakia used Kimoyo tech on you in the field, so you should be all healed up pretty quickly.”

“I barely even feel it,” Steve says, wiggling a little.

Bucky laughs and puts both hands on Steve’s shoulders to stop him moving around too much. “That’s the Kimoyo tech,” he says. “And the painkillers. But you _are_ still injured, please stop trying to pop your stitches.”

Steve sighs showily, and rolls his eyes. “Fine, I guess,” he huffs, then grins when Bucky laughs again. _God_ , he loves that laugh.

“Oh, hey,” Bucky says suddenly, remembering something. “I have something for you.”

He takes his hands off of Steve, the coffee-hot warmth of them retreating and leaving a regrettable coolness in their absence, but it’s only so he can reach behind himself and unclasp the chain that’s still tucked under his sweater. He holds out Steve’s ring.

“I kept it safe for you,” Bucky says softly as Steve takes it back and slips it on his left ring finger. “It kept me safe, too.”

“Is that what happened?” Steve asks, smiling down at his ring, right where it belongs. He looks back up at Bucky’s smiling face. Right where he belongs, too. But Steve’s eyebrows knit together as he remembers, “When Rumlow went for you with that knife, I think my heart actually stopped. I thought he was gonna kill you.”

“Sorry,” Bucky winces. “I knew he would try to stab me in the throat if I looked like I was attacking him. It’s kind of a signature move of his. Figured I could aim it at our rings, and get out of that with only a bruise.”

He pulls the collar of his sweater down to show Steve the interlocked circular and half-moon bruises just under the divot of his collarbone.

“Jesus fucking Christ,” Steve mutters. “Please, never do something that risky again, love,” he begs. “I mean, thanks for getting us out of there alive, but _Jesus fucking Christ!_ ”

Bucky chuckles softly. “Don’t worry,” he murmurs, carding his fingers through Steve’s hair again, “I don’t plan on making a habit of it.”

“Okay,” Steve breathes, reaching for Bucky’s other hand, and bringing it to his mouth to brush his lips over Bucky’s soft metal fingers. “Okay, good.”

They stay just like that for a moment, Steve kissing Bucky’s fingers, and Bucky stroking Steve’s long hair, quietly soaking in each other’s presence.

After a while, Steve breaks the silence. “You really are amazing,” he tells Bucky softly, and so, so honest.

Bucky snorts.

“You are!” Steve insists. “Your skills are ridiculous, and your mind is incredible. You faced those people who hurt you so badly, and you _won!_ That’s amazing, gorgeous. You’re _amazing_.”

The corner of Bucky’s mouth pulls into a sweet, crooked smile. “Yeah,” he murmurs thoughtfully. “Maybe I am.”

Steve’s grin is gigantic. That is the first time Bucky has _ever_ genuinely acknowledged his own worth, even a little. A warm, radiating light floods through Steve. Bucky deserves the whole entire world. He deserves all the happiness he can bear, and more. If he can start to see that himself— _God_ , that idea makes Steve happy.

The sound of light but quick footsteps patters toward them in the hall, and suddenly a little girl with long, tumbling blonde curls appears in the doorway. She sees Bucky, and smiles with her whole face, launching herself at him as she yells, “Yashechka!”

Bucky grunts as she lands in his arms, catching her quickly, even though he clearly did not anticipate a small body projectile launching full-force at him with no warning.

“Dashenka,” he says to her, “chto ty zdes' delayesh’?”

The little girl replies in Russian, and Bucky laughs. He says something back to her, and she rolls her eyes. But when Bucky puts her down, she smiles and hugs him, then waves to Steve, and runs off again.

“Who was that?” Steve asks, nonplussed by this sudden appearance and disappearance of a child he’s never seen before, as Bucky watches her leave with a fond smile on his face.

“That was Dasha,” Bucky replies, sitting back down in his chair next to Steve’s bed. “She’s from the Red Room. She stabbed me in the bunker, that’s why my leg was bleeding when you found me again.”

Steve blinks. “Okay, later, you’re gonna have to go through _everything_ I missed out there with me,” he says. Bucky giggles.

“Dasha was the one who told Nat to come find us after you got shot,” he says proudly.

“Bucky,” Steve asks slowly, “did you—? Did you adopt a Russian child while I was sleeping?”

Bucky throws his head back, laughing so hard he nearly falls out of his chair.

🎈

“Stop arguing with me!”

Bucky laughs incredulously. “ _Becca!_ ” he groans. “I _told_ you—!”

“Yeah, yeah,” Becca interrupts him, waving him off dismissively, “you don’t want to steal my thunder, I _heard_ you the hundred other times you’ve said it. I don’t fucking _care_ , Jamie, I told _you_ that! You got married, and you’re not even wearing your ring because of some stupid sense of obligation to what? My wedding? _Who cares?!_ ”

“ _I_ care!” Bucky cries. “Bex, you’ve been engaged for _two years_ , and I know that’s my fuckin’ fault, okay? I’m not aboutta barrel in here when you can _finally_ get married, and snatch the attention out from under you by goin’, ‘Hey, guess what, parents? I did, too!’”

Becca rolls her eyes so hard, Bucky thinks she may have genuinely flipped them all the way back into her head.

“ _God_ , you’re insufferable,” she sighs.

Then she puts both hands on his shoulders, and shakes him a little, staring intently at him with eyes that match his. The only eyes he wants to match his. The only ones that do anymore.

“Bucky,” she tells him seriously, “I don’t care about attention. I don’t care about my ‘thunder.’ If I did, I’d’ve had an extravagant ceremony, and I wouldn’t’ve waited for you.” She smiles gently. “All I care about is that you’re here to watch me get married. Just like I got to watch you. Okay?”

Bucky pouts a little to cover for the fact his eyes are getting misty. “Okay,” he relents.

Becca grins. “Good,” she says. “Tell Mom and Dad that you’re married. They’re gonna be _thrilled_.”

🎈

They are.

When Bucky holds Steve’s hand in front of his parents — in their house, the one he grew up in, the one that smells like his childhood, like home — with Becca and Sipho sitting nearby, and tells them that he’s married to the love of his whole life, Winnie screams, and George bursts into happy tears. They both immediately smother Bucky and Steve in huge hugs and peppered kisses.

Winnie takes Bucky’s face in her hands as he cries joyful tears just like his father’s, and says to him, “May your happiness only grow, my son.”

Then, she turns to Steve, touches his face, and says exactly the same thing.

Bucky cries even harder, and Steve’s eyes are none too dry, either.

Wine is poured, and they drink l’chaim. And then Steve sweeps Bucky into his arms and kisses him, right there before God and Bucky’s entire family, like this is the first of hundreds of thousands of kisses Steve will give him for the rest of their lives.

Later, after Becca and Sipho have said goodnight, and gone back to their own home, and George has kissed Bucky’s cheek, and then Steve’s, and retired to bed for the night, Bucky lies across his parents’ sofa between his husband’s legs, back resting against Steve’s solid chest (careful not to put too much weight on his stomach), sleepily watching the fire in the hearth as Steve and his mom chat quietly. Steve’s fingers are stroking absently through his hair, and Bucky is halfway to just falling asleep like this, happy and content, when he feels a slight hesitant tension roll through his husband’s body. It wakes him up enough to draw his attention to Steve and Winnifred’s conversation.

Winnie must see something in Steve’s face, because she asks him softly, “What is it, Steve?”

Bucky glances up to see Steve wet his lips nervously. Those fingers still in his hair.

“Bucky and I found out a few weeks ago that we lived in the same building as babies in Brooklyn,” Steve begins slowly. “My ma lived there when I was born, and I would have been about two when you guys moved out.”

Winnie tilts her head inquisitively, her eyebrows raising in mild surprise, but she doesn’t say anything yet. Just waits for Steve to continue.

“I was just—” Steve says, but then stops. He sighs. “I guess I was just wondering if you ever met her. My ma, I mean. She was a single mom, my dad died before I was born. She passed away a long time ago. But being here with you and your family just…reminds me of her. And I guess I was curious—”

“What was her name, sweetie?” Winnie gently interrupts Steve’s rambling to ask.

“Sarah,” Steve answers. “Sarah Rogers. She was Irish, moved to the US when she was twenty, still had an accent.”

Winnie’s eyes have widened in awe, a gentle smile spreading slowly across her face.

“Oh my god,” she breathes wonderingly. “Oh, I can’t believe I didn’t put it together before. _You’re_ little Stevie Rogers?”

Bucky can feel the soft, stuttering gasp that hisses through Steve’s lungs. “You knew my ma?” he asks, his voice high, childish and emotional. Bucky finds his hand, and squeezes.

But Winnie is grinning, and setting aside her mug of tea to stand up out of her chair. “Sarah was a dear friend of mine,” she’s saying as she walks over to one of the bookshelves lining the walls, full to bursting with books and photo albums. She starts running her long, nimble fingers over the spines of the albums, searching for something. “One of the hardest things about leaving, when we had to come here, was leaving your mom and her sweet little boy. I couldn’t even tell her where we were going, or try to contact her after we arrived. It devastated me, and worse when I found out, years after the fact, that my lovely friend had died. Ah, here.”

Winnie pulls a photo album from the shelf, and returns with it to Steve and Bucky. Bucky sits up and swings his legs off the sofa to make room for his mom to come sit next to him.

“So yes,” Winnie says as she flips through the pages of the photo album, “I knew your ma, Steve. I also knew you.” She finds the page she’s looking for, and passes it over to Steve and Bucky. “And so did Bucky.”

The page she’s opened to contains a photograph from, according to the time stamp in the lower corner, November 15th, 1986. There are three people in the picture. One is Bucky, he knows, as a very little toddler. November of ‘86, he would have been a year and a half old. He’s sitting right in the middle of a large sofa, his chubby little legs straight out in front of him on the sofa cushions, a little poof of brown, fluffy curls right on the top of his head. He’s grinning toothily with whatever teeth he had at the time, his little nose scrunched up the way he knows it still does when he smiles that big. There’s a woman he doesn’t recognize sitting beside him—except that he _does_ recognize her, because she looks exactly like her son.

Sarah Rogers’ nose was smaller and straighter than Steve’s is now, and her features were narrower, more elfish than his. But he has her face. Her eyes. Her golden hair. Her _smile_. In the picture, she’s looking down at little Bucky with a smile on her face that Bucky has seen on _Steve’s_ , when _he’s_ been looking at Bucky now.

And Bucky is pretty sure he and Steve have both just stopped breathing altogether, because Sarah in the picture is helping a tiny, baby Bucky hold in his arms, a tinier, babier, Steve.

Steve is itty bitty. He only would have been four months old at this point. He’s swaddled in blankets, but it’s still unmistakably him. That’s his swoop of blond hair. His cornflower blue eyes. He’s gazing up at Bucky, and he’s laughing.

Looking at this picture, Bucky can’t decide whether he wants to laugh, cry, or kiss his husband.

He ends up doing all three.

Steve does all three, too.

🎈

The only thing that’s still hanging over their heads at all is the question no one really wants to ask: did their plan work?

When they first got back, and T’Challa flipped through the Winter Soldier book, Bucky sat there beside him and watched his face darken with every page he skimmed.

“Is that face because of the contents?” Bucky asked finally when T’Challa closed the book on the last page and closed his eyes. “Or because it’s not enough?”

“It’s enough,” T’Challa said darkly. “It’s more than enough. Bucky—”

“I’m okay,” Bucky said quickly, wanting nothing less than a show of sympathy. After everything he’d been through over the last few hours, sympathy from the man who might as well be his brother would have just broken him.

But T’Challa just looked at him sideways, and smiled. “I know,” he said softly. “I have no idea how you are, but you are. There must be things they did to you that they didn’t record in writing, too. You’re even stronger than I thought.”

Bucky felt his face warm. But T’Challa just hugged him, and sent him off to go sit by Steve until he woke up.

Since then, it’s just been a waiting game as T’Challa has done what he can diplomatically.

Finally, three days after their return, the entire team has been gathered in the beautiful throne room. The anticipation of the news they’re here for has them all quiet.

Bucky’s standing a little away from the rest, staring out the huge windows at the landscape of this country he truly does love, when Steve comes up behind him and wraps big arms around his waist.

Bucky leans his shoulders back into Steve’s chest, careful, again, to keep his weight off Steve’s still-healing stomach.

“It really is beautiful here,” Steve murmurs, hooking his chin over Bucky’s shoulder, and looking out the windows with him.

“It is,” Bucky agrees, nuzzling the side of his face into Steve’s, enjoying the soft tickle of his beard, and the hair that’s grown long enough to curl under his ears now. “It’s really…not so bad here.”

With their faces pressed together cheek to cheek like this, Bucky can feel Steve’s slow smile.

“Yeah?” he asks. “Not feeling like we gotta move on?”

“Not so much anymore,” Bucky admits. “I miss home, but…here is good, too.”

Steve turns his head, and presses a smiling kiss against Bucky’s face.

Just then, there’s a small commotion behind them as T’Challa enters the throne room. Steve and Bucky turn around, and T’Challa gestures for them all to sit in the chairs that make a circle in the center of the room.

Bucky sits between Steve and Natasha. Sam is on Natasha’s other side, then Carol, Tony, Okoye, Clint, and finally Nakia, with T’Challa on his throne. Once everyone is seated, T’Challa looks around at all of their hushed, waiting faces. And smiles.

“It is done,” he says with a huge finality.

Something — some ancient, breathless tension — is released, all at once, from all of them. Like a gust of wind blowing through a field of wheat, rustling through them all.

T’Challa is grinning. And slowly, each person catches that grin, holds it.

“The Russian government has dissolved Hydra, and severed its ties with the group,” T’Challa says. “Every operative they have knowledge of — which should be all of them, based on what our War Dogs have uncovered — has been arrested, or is being pursued. Trials will begin shortly.”

He looks at Bucky, who blinks at him through tears, and says, “It’s over.”

It’s instantaneous. Suddenly, everyone is talking, laughing, hugging. Bucky just sits there as it hits him all over again. It’s been coming to him in waves of realization for days. It’s _over_. It’s _done_. Bucky is _free._

He sits there, and tears spill onto his cheeks. He’s been crying so fucking much the past few months. Like as soon as Steve started seeing him for who he is, and accepted him, without a moment’s hesitation, it burst a dam inside of him.

Steve kisses his temple, laughing with his delight, and Natasha pulls him to his feet to drag him into a hug that Sam quickly joins, wrapping his arms around both Bucky and Nat at once. Steve throws his arms around all three of them, and then there’s another few bumps, as more and more of the team joins in. Until Bucky finds himself in the middle of a huge, ecstatic group hug.

It takes a _while_ , but eventually, they all part. Tony says something about celebrating, and each and every one of them hug Bucky one more time before they trickle out of the throne room, leaving only Bucky, Steve, and T’Challa.

“So,” Steve asks when they’ve all sat back down, reaching out to hold Bucky’s right hand between both of his, “what do we do now?”

“That is entirely up to you,” T’Challa tells him and Bucky both. He smiles. “If you wish to remain in Wakanda, we will be honored to give you a home here. Or, if you would rather, the War Dogs tell me that it is safe for you to return to New York.”

“What happens if it becomes unsafe again?” Steve asks carefully. Bucky pulls Steve’s hands in to kiss his fingers as T’Challa answers him.

“It will not. My people in New York will continue to watch for Hydra’s resurgence, and if you will allow,” T’Challa addresses this part to Bucky, “they will protect you.”

Bucky nods his assent. He never would have allowed something like this before. He would have felt like a burden, like he’s not worth that kind of care from others. But he feels changed. He feels new. He wants to be safe. He wants to _live_.

T’Challa smiles at Bucky. “I’ll leave you to discuss it, then,” he tells them both softly. “Congratulations, Bucky.” And with that, he stands, pats Bucky gently on the shoulder, and leaves the throne room.

Steve looks at Bucky, who looks at Steve, who shrugs.

“It’s up to you,” Steve says, a soft smile on his face.

Bucky frowns. It is clearly _not_ up to him. Steve should have a say in where they live, too.

But Steve very obviously sees that in Bucky’s face, and before he can say any of it out loud, Steve argues with him.

“No,” he says in response to Bucky’s frown, “you need to make this decision for you, honey.” He squeezes Bucky’s hand. “Take me out of the equation.”

Bucky huffs a sigh. “I can’t take you out of the equation, sunshine,” he argues back, “we’re _married_ now, this decision affects you as much as it does me.”

“Yeah,” Steve replies, hesitating, “but…we can—” He wets his lips, and Bucky’s frown deepens. Steve looks up into his eyes and says softly, “That can just be a legality for now, if you want. We can go back to dating. Everything got so intense, and I know you wanted to take things slow, and this was the _opposite_ of that—”

“I don’t want to take things slow with you, Rogers!” Bucky cries. It comes out louder than he meant to, but he is shutting this down _now_.

Steve pauses, startled. “Really?” he asks, like this is somehow _news_ to him, what the _fuck_. “But—”

“No!” Bucky shouts over him. He’s done not being totally and completely honest about how he feels with this beautiful man he loves so much. Steve needs to _know_ this. “I never _wanted_ to, I— I fell for you the very first night I met you, Stevie,” he soughs, watching as Steve’s eyebrows rise higher and higher on his forehead. “I spent _weeks_ trying to convince myself that wasn’t true, but it is. I only wanted to take things slow with you because I was so fucking scared I was gonna fuck this up before it had a chance to become something. And I _really_ wanted something with you.”

Bucky reaches up with his left hand, and strokes his fingers through Steve’s lovely beard. “But I don’t want _slow_ anymore,” he breathes. “I want— I mean, if slow is what _you_ want, we can do that,” he amends, suddenly realizing he might be stepping on what Steve wants here, “that’s fine, but if you’re asking me what _I_ want....” He trails off, but Steve picks it up quickly.

“I am,” Steve tells Bucky fervently. “That’s what I’m asking you. What do you want, Bucky?”

Bucky takes a deep breath, wets his lips, brushes his thumb across Steve’s high cheekbone, and gushes out, “I want to be your husband, Steve Rogers. I want to change my name again so it matches yours. I want to wake up every single morning to your stinky morning breath, and fall asleep every night in your arms. I want to love you until the day I die. I want you to be mine, always. I want it _all_.”

Steve gives him a watery grin, smiling through a fresh bout of happy tears. God, they’re _all_ just crying like crazy, aren’t they?

“I want that, too, Bucky Barnes,” Steve whispers.

Bucky grins back at him. “Bucky _Rogers_ ,” he corrects.

Steve makes a face. “That makes you sound like a cowboy in a children’s show from the fifties,” he laughs. “Or, more pointedly, a science fiction character in a pulp magazine from the thirties.”

Bucky giggles. “Maybe I _wanna_ be a cowboy in a children’s show from the fifties,” he says contrarily. “ _Or_ a science fiction character in a pulp magazine from the thirties.”

That makes Steve laugh, big and booming, and Bucky loves him. So _fucking_ much.

Bucky watches this beautiful, kind, wonderful man laugh, his joy written plainly all across his face, and smiles.

“Barnes-Rogers?” he asks more seriously when Steve’s laughter has died down a little. “We could both hyphenate.”

“Rogers-Barnes, then,” Steve counters, his eyes crinkling, his smile unbearably soft. “The rhythm is better.”

“Hm,” Bucky considers, and presses his lips to the back of Steve’s hand. “Bucky Rogers-Barnes,” he murmurs against Steve’s skin, trying it out. “James Buchanan Rogers-Barnes.” Bucky smiles. It feels _good_.

“Steven Grant Rogers-Barnes,” Steve echoes, trying on his own name.

“Steve Rogers-Barnes,” Bucky agrees. “I like it.”

“Yeah?” Steve asks softly.

“Yeah,” Bucky whispers back.

They might be grinning dopily at each other now, but Bucky doesn’t care. He’s so fucking happy. He’s never, ever felt like this. He doesn’t have to be afraid anymore. He’s so incredibly in love. Steve knows him, and loves him back.

He has everything he could possibly ask for, right here.

Steve leans in and kisses Bucky’s mouth, just a soft, tender press of lips. And when he pulls back a little, he reaches up to trace the tips of his fingers down Bucky’s temple, and across his jaw. “And where are the Rogers-Barneses going to live, my beautiful husband?” he asks.

Bucky blushes. “I mean,” he begins, retreating into his shoulders to hide the flush in his cheeks, “your whole _life_ is in—”

“No!” Steve interrupts, laughing exasperatedly. “I told you to take me out of the equation.”

Bucky huffs. “Steve, I _can’t_ —”

“Anywhere you want to go, I’ll be,” Steve swears with hushed ardency. “I’m a writer, I can work from anywhere. And Tony owns _multiple_ jets that he will _for sure_ let me use, I can go back to see my friends or do investigative research whenever I want. You tell me where you feel safe — where you feel _home_ — and I will be there.” He looks over Bucky’s face, blue-green eyes so clear, so pure. “Okay?”

Bucky melts under Steve’s loving gaze. He takes a moment, thinking. But as he thinks, it becomes so incredibly clear.

“Safe is you,” Bucky breathes, realizing the deep, eternal truth of it as it passes his lips. “Home is _you_.”

Steve gives him a soft, teary smile, cupping Bucky’s face in his palm. “I feel the same way, gorgeous,” he whispers.

Bucky lets out a breathy laugh. “Then it doesn’t matter, does it?”

“No,” Steve agrees, smiling like sunshine. “No, it doesn’t matter at all.”

They pull toward each other at the same moment, wrapping each other up, and just holding on for a minute. Bucky buries his face in Steve’s neck, and Steve nuzzles into Bucky’s hair.

After a minute or two of just breathing in Steve’s warm, clean smell, like fresh laundry and tea, Bucky hooks his chin over Steve’s shoulder.

“I want to go back to Brooklyn,” he murmurs.

Steve pulls back, and smiles at him. “Yeah?” he asks.

Bucky nods. He does, he really does.

“I want to go back to my kids,” he says, and then it all starts flowing out of him, everything he wants. “I want to tell RJ how I really feel about him: that he’s my kid, and that if he wants me to be, I’m his dad. I want to legally adopt him, if he’ll let me. I want to get to know all your friends even more, and I want to make friends of my own, and get back in touch with my old squad, and I want us to make friends _together_ who have never known us apart. I want my life that I built, and I want to share it with you.”

Steve tilts up and kisses Bucky’s forehead, smiling into it.

“That sounds _perfect_ , Buck,” he soughs.

🎈

Bucky is surprised to find, when the rest of the team, aside from Okoye and Nakia, has to head home, that it’s hard to say goodbye to them. Even knowing that he and Steve will be returning soon. There’s something about when people pledge their loyalty to you, and follow you into death and destruction to give you your freedom, after a lifetime of enslavement and fear, that just bonds you to them for the rest of eternity, he supposes.

In the days since the mission, Bucky has found himself spending a lot of time with each of these people individually, and as they start to leave, he’s realizing that he genuinely loves them all.

Tony wraps him up in a big hug, and tries to pretend his voice isn’t thick with tears as he mutters a joke about how he can’t wait for Bucky to come knocking on his door whenever his arm malfunctions back in the States. But Bucky knows very well that Tony has been spending hours of the last few days in Shuri’s lab, asking her a million questions, and marveling at her creations while she pretends not to preen. He knows this because Bucky’s been spending time there, too, chatting with the both of them when Shuri’s had a break, and with just Tony when she’s been busy. And the day Bucky started down the ramp into the lab, only to hear Tony asking specific questions about the upkeep of his arm, he froze where he was, shamelessly eavesdropping long enough to realize that Tony was asking these questions for the express purpose of being there for Bucky, in case he _does_ need some emergency maintenance in New York. Just so Bucky won’t have to drop everything, and fly to Wakanda in an emergency.

It struck Bucky right in his heart to hear Tony making plans to help him, unprompted and unasked. In fact, Bucky even asked Steve, later that night, if _he_ had asked Tony to do that, and Steve’s eyes had welled up as he said no, no he hadn’t.

So Bucky hugs Tony back just as tight, and then pulls back to grin at him.

“If we get back, and you _haven’t_ asked that woman out,” Bucky warns Tony jovially, referring to the many long talks the two of them have had about Tony’s COO and how much he pines after her, “I will do it for you. And you won’t like the way I do it.”

Tony huffs indignantly, and rolls his eyes. “Jesus,” he mutters, ducking to hide a blush that Bucky absolutely sees anyway, “you and Cap were fucking made for each other, you know that?”

Bucky grins. “I do, actually,” he replies proudly. “And I’m not kidding, Stark,” he adds cheerfully.

“ _God_ ,” Tony groans. “Fine, _fine_ , Jesus.”

But despite all the grumbling, Tony hugs Bucky quickly one last time before he heads up the ramp into the Fighter.

Carol is next. Bucky didn’t know her at all before this, but as soon as they had an opportunity to talk, the two of them clicked instantaneously. She and Steve are very similar in a lot of ways, but Steve’s intense need to prove himself is mellowed out in Carol. She knows she’s great, and she doesn’t care if anyone else agrees. It’s a quality Bucky really admires in her, and they’ve spent a few days joking and laughing together, learning that their senses of humor are very much the same. There have even been a few times while Steve was sleeping through his recovery that Carol and Bucky found time to spar together. And where Bucky is quick, light, and stabby, Carol is solid, strong, and punchy. It’s been fun, figuring out how to best each other.

“Promise me a rematch when you get home,” Carol says, squeezing Bucky almost too tightly. “I am not letting that weird move you pulled last time stand.”

Bucky laughs, trying to squeeze her too tightly right back. “It wasn’t a weird move,” he protests. “It’s not my fault your footwork is appalling.”

“Don’t need footwork when you have brute strength,” Carol laughs, and Bucky groans.

“I can’t _believe_ I have _two_ dumb, blond jocks now,” he complains, which earns him a loud, smacking kiss to his cheek.

“Can’t get rid of me now!” Carol cries, pulling back just to slap him lightly on the cheek she just kissed, cackling loudly at Bucky’s shocked noise in response as she jogs onto the plane.

Next is Clint, who is apparently exactly who Bucky had him pegged as when they first met — highly competent, and also a fucking disaster. But he’s equally and truly a good man, despite being a total mess, and his open veneration for both Steve and Natasha endeared him to Bucky very quickly. He’s funny, and he’s kind, and he laughed for three days straight when Bucky finally, completely out of the blue, realized something, and squawked, “Wait, _how_ did I miss your bugs?!”

Clint wrinkles his nose when Bucky hugs him, and he doesn’t say much, but his quick, “See you soon, pal,” sounds strained, like he’s trying not to cry.

Sam is probably the person Bucky has gotten closest to over the past few days. Everything they had in common that first day they met was really only the beginning, it turns out, and Bucky quickly found a kindred spirit in his husband’s best friend. Someone who laughs and nods when Bucky whines about Steve’s particular brand of dumbass, and who only smiles warmly when Bucky has to hide his face in his own hands because he’s blushing with how much he _fucking loves_ his husband. Sam is also like Becca, in that he will be the most supportive person in the entire world in one moment, and in the next, he will insult you to your face, and laugh about it.

Bucky will never admit it to him, but he really loves that about Sam.

“All right, dillweed,” Sam says, as though _Bucky_ is the one clinging a little too tight to their hug, and not him, “I’ll see you in like a week, get off.”

Bucky fixes Sam with a glare. “Yeah, yeah,” he retorts, “try to find a way to live without me ‘til then, huh?”

Sam chuckles, then glances over to where Steve and Natasha are saying their own goodbyes a few feet away.

“He hasn’t said anything about it yet,” Sam says, dropping his voice and taking on a more serious tone, “but I’m guessing he’s probably gonna be moving out soon, isn’t he?”

Bucky smiles apologetically. “Yeah,” he confirms. “I’m taking him away again, sorry.”

Sam shakes his head. “You didn’t take him away the first time, and you’re not doing it now,” he retorts. “Honest, I couldn’t be more thrilled for you both. You’re married, you should live together.”

“You’re not gonna tell me this has all been way too fast?” Bucky asks, genuinely surprised.

“Nope,” Sam says, grinning. “Honestly, the fact that Steve moved so fast with you actually tells me that this is the _right_ thing for him. It’s who he is, once he makes a decision, he’s all in. He’s a very all-or-nothing kinda guy.”

“I’ve noticed,” Bucky says fondly, unable to keep the smile off his own face.

Sam nods. “The more I got to know him, the weirder it seemed to me that he and Peggy dated for seven years before he thought to propose to her. Four months actually makes _way_ more sense for him, and the fact that you wanted to marry him, too, after only that long makes me think it was absolutely the right decision for _both_ of you.”

Sam’s smile turns soft, and he claps Bucky on the arm. “You’re a good guy, Buck. I’m happy to know you, and I’m thrilled Steve found you.”

Bucky’s face scrunches up at the heartfelt compliment. “Gross,” he says, glad when Sam laughs, clearly understanding that what he really meant was, ‘ _Thank you_.’

Sam starts to turn to go, but Bucky stops him.

“Hey, actually,” he says quickly, “I did want to ask you something.”

Sam raises his eyebrows at him. “Sure, what’s up?”

Bucky wets his lips. “Are you gonna be looking for another roommate when Steve moves out?”

“Probably,” Sam says, curious. “Can’t really afford the place on my own, and—” he lowers his voice even more, “—Nat’s not quite ready for me to ask her to move in. It’s only been four months of dating for _us_ right now, y’know?”

Bucky grins and nods. Nat is much better at guarding her heart than Bucky has ever been.

“Why?” Sam asks. “You know someone looking for a place?”

“I do, actually,” Bucky tells him. “My kid, RJ, needs out of the hole he’s living in. I pay his rent, and with Steve moving in, I can afford to get him set up somewhere better. He’s only nineteen, but he’s really independent and mature. He’s a great kid. If you wanna meet him before you agree to anything, I can set something up when I get back.”

Sam shakes his head. “Nah, man,” he says. “Given everything I know about you, and everything I’ve seen, I trust your judgement. If he’s in, I’m in. We’ll work it out when you get back, yeah?”

“Thanks, Sam,” Bucky says warmly. “Really.”

Sam nods. He reaches out and hugs Bucky one more time, then waves at Steve, and jogs into the Fighter after the others.

Which leaves Natasha.

As soon as she reaches Bucky, they throw their arms around each other, holding onto each other tightly.

Bucky has no words for her. Or at least not any that can truly express how he feels about her. His gratitude to her. How important she is to him, how important she has _always_ been to him. How important she’ll always be.

But she doesn’t say anything, either. She just holds him, arms around his shoulders. And he just holds her, arms around her waist. They just stay like that for a while, breathing, and holding, and loving each other.

Finally, at the same moment, they both let go. It feels symbolic, somehow. The letting go of each other, of their shared past, to embrace their futures with their new loves. But, Bucky thinks as warmth spreads through his veins, they’ll get to share those futures, too. Older, wiser, and healed. And still just as much a part of each other’s stories as they always have been.

“I love you,” Bucky tells her, because he does.

Natasha smiles. “I love you, too,” she says back, because she does, too.

Bucky leans down and kisses her cheek, and she kisses his. And then she smiles again, and turns to go.

Steve comes up behind Bucky, and loops his arms around his waist as they both watch the Fighter’s doors slowly close, waving at their friends — truly _theirs_ , now; Steve’s, and Bucky’s, too — who all wave back. And when the plane lifts up into the air, Steve kisses Bucky’s temple, and Bucky turns so Steve will kiss his mouth.

“We’ll see them soon,” Steve tells him softly.

Bucky smiles.

“Yeah,” he agrees. “We will.”

🎈

Saying goodbye to Steve’s friends seems to flip a switch in Bucky’s mind. And all he can think about, for _hours_ afterwards, is the Howling Commandos.

He let those friendships fall by the wayside. He let distance pull them apart.

He doesn’t want that anymore.

Honestly, though, trying to reach out to any of them, when Bucky knows that he’s the one at fault for not being close to them anymore, is absolutely terrifying. So he decides to just rip the band-aid off all at once, and sends a group email to all of them.

" _Hey guys_ ,” the email reads simply. “ _I know I kind of dropped off the map a few years ago. I’m so sorry. I had reasons, and it’s a long story, but I’d really love to tell it to you all someday. Soon, maybe, if you want. I miss you guys. A lot. Would you want to catch up sometime, maybe?_ ”

Within minutes of hitting send and then tossing his phone across the bed, Bucky gets an email back from Morita with a link to a video call.

He’s honestly expecting it to be just Jim. Jim has always been the most forgiving of all of them, so it makes sense that he’d be the first one to accept an olive branch. But when Bucky clicks on the link and opens the call, he’s greeted not just by Jim’s grinning face, but four others, too. His entire squad is on this call, and when his video connects, they all yell out, “ _Sarge!_ ” in utter delight.

Bucky, horrifyingly, actually bursts into tears.

They all take that in stride, too.

Dernier seems to be in France, only two hours behind Bucky, because it’s nighttime there, too, but everyone else seems to be in the States. In fact, Monty, Jim, and Gabe are all crowded around one device, because apparently they dropped the DnD session they were all in the midst of playing the moment they got Bucky’s email. Dum Dum is in a supply closet, clearly at work and hiding so he can be part of this call, too.

Bucky barely gets a word in the first few minutes, that’s how happy his friends are to see him. They just keep yelling excitedly and asking him when he’ll be back in New York and can they _please_ take him out to eat when he gets back and when will that be again? And Bucky just laughs wetly and says soon, and yes, and soon, over and over.

At one point, he’s interrupted by Steve walking into their bedroom, and when he looks up to tell him that he’s on a video call with his friends, his friends all get suspiciously quiet. Bucky looks back down at his computer to see them all leaned way into their cameras, trying to listen for a response from whoever Bucky is talking to.

“Nerds!” Bucky bellows at them, and then cackles when all jump back.

“Who was that?” Gabe asks.

“Are you dating someone?” Jim demands.

“Guys,” Dum Dum starts diplomatically, “it’s been a while, but this is still the _sarge_ ,” he says with a mischievous twinkle in his eye.

Bucky glowers at him at the very accurate implication that he was _never_ ‘dating someone’ back then, at least not for long.

“I’m not dating anyone,” Bucky tells them all, pausing so Dum Dum has a moment to look smug, and the rest can look disgruntled and disappointed for just a second. And then he adds, “That was my husband.”

There is an extremely satisfying moment of shocked silence, and then, from across the room, Steve bursts out laughing. And all five of the men on the screen start to yell over each other, and Bucky cracks up, too.

🎈

Becca’s wedding is beautiful.

She and Sipho have a much more traditional Wakandan ceremony than Steve and Bucky did, performed entirely in Xhosa. Bucky spends the ceremony alternating between whispering translations in Steve’s ear, and choking on his own tears. Luckily, Shuri takes up translation duty when Bucky finds himself unable, so Steve is able to enjoy the wedding as much as anyone else is.

Bucky weeps. Much more than Becca did at his wedding, but that’s to be expected, honestly. Between the two of them, he’s always been the crier. But here, at her own wedding, as she marries the man she’s loved for years and years, Becca cries, too. She cries, and she laughs, and she’s absolutely radiant.

The ceremony leads directly into the kind of celebration they’re best at here in Wakanda. There’s food, and dancing, and so much joy, and Bucky may or may not weep through that, too. Steve laughs, and holds him, and dances with him, and kisses him, and it feels so much like a happily-ever-after, that Bucky is overwhelmed with it. He never ever thought he’d get something like this, and he never ever thought he’d get to watch his sister get hers, too.

He’s so, so happy he does.

Later, when she’s tipsy, and giggly, and wearing no shoes, Becca drapes her legs over Bucky’s lap, and swings her arms around his neck, resting her head on his shoulder like she used to do when she was eight and he was eleven. Like she did when she was three and he was six. And he plants a kiss to the top of her head, and holds her there.

“You happy, Bex?” Bucky asks, knowing the answer before she nods.

“You and Steve should go on a honeymoon,” she tells him, changing the subject entirely as far as Bucky can tell.

He reaches up and pulls a dark blonde curl out of her face. “We will,” he assures her. “Not yet, though. I want to go home for a while first. I miss it.”

Becca hums, and nods against Bucky’s shoulder again. “Are you gonna have a party?”

“A party for what?”

“For your wedding, dumbass,” Becca says in a long-suffering tone of voice, making Bucky snort.

“I think maybe we will,” he admits. They’ve been talking about it. Before all of this, Bucky never would have even considered it. Who would he have invited? But now— Now, Bucky has friends, old and new. Now, his family can come visit him.

Now, the entire world has opened up to him, all at once.

Bucky looks over at Steve, who is dancing terribly, but enthusiastically, with a group of kids — a sight that has been making Bucky’s theoretical uterus ache longingly. Steve would make such a great dad. Bucky would fucking love to watch Steve raise a child — to raise one _with_ him. Maybe more than one. Another thing Bucky never would have thought he’d get the chance to do, another thing he could genuinely _do_ now.

Becca follows Bucky’s gaze, and smiles.

“Would you come to New York if we did?” Bucky asks her. “If we had a party?”

Becca makes a _pfft_ noise, and then says, “You even have to _ask_ me that? Jamie. Me, Sipho, Mom, Dad, Shuri, T’Challa, _and_ Auntie Ramonda will _all_ be there, no questions asked.”

“And who will run Wakanda while the entire royal family is at my wedding reception?”

Becca shrugs. “Not my job to figure that out,” she mumbles.

Bucky laughs loudly. “I love you, Bex,” he tells her.

“Love you, too, Jamie,” she says back, and then yawns.

Bucky starts stroking his little sister’s hair out of her face, humming to her under his breath like he used to do when they were kids, and she would resist going to sleep, wanting desperately to stay up, and anxious about missing something fun and exciting because she was sleeping. Bucky would stroke her hair when she did this, and hum to her. And like clockwork, she would sleep.

“Jamie?” Becca asks after a few minutes of this, her voice much drowsier than it was before.

“Hmm?”

“How would you feel about Sipho and I being closer to you?”

Bucky cranes his neck to try to get a look at her face, but her eyes are closed like she really is about to fall asleep.

“Closer?” he asks her instead, and she nods.

“Like living-in-New-York-near-you closer?”

Bucky’s hand stills in her hair. “You wanna move to New York?” he asks breathlessly.

“Yeah,” Becca yawns. “Since I can leave Wakanda safely now, we were talking about moving to live close to you.”

“Why?” Bucky breathes, hardly daring to believe, to hope.

Becca snorts like that’s a ridiculous question. “Because you live in New York,” she says, and it sounds like, ‘ _Duh!_ ’ “Because I’ve missed you for half my life, and now I could actually live near you, and see you regularly. Would you be okay with that?”

Bucky puts his hand on Becca’s forehead to tilt her face up, forcing her to open her eyes and see the way tears are forming in his again, nothing but hopeful delight all over his face.

“Bex,” he whispers wonderingly, “I would fucking _love_ that!”

Becca grins, then shakes her head to dislodge Bucky’s hand, so she can nuzzle back into his neck, and sleep through the last little bit of her own wedding reception.

“Okay,” she murmurs softly. “Good. Me too.”

🎈

Saying goodbye to Bucky’s family a few days later ends up being pretty fucking hard, too. Bucky cannot wait to be back home, in his own apartment, with RJ and his new friends and old friends, but it’s really hard to hug his mom, his dad, his auntie, and his siblings (both genetic and not), and know that he won’t see them all tomorrow morning. But each of them promises to come see him soon and often, and he promises exactly the same. And when Winnifred wraps him up in one last hug before he leaves, she whispers to him that she and George are considering following Becca and Sipho when they move out to New York.

And then she hands him a silver picture frame, telling him it’s a wedding present, and Bucky looks down to see that photo of him, Steve, and Sarah from years ago in his hands.

So the leaving is hard, yes. But when they land in New York, and say goodbye to Okoye and Nakia (with the same promises to see each other soon and often), and then get in a cab to Bucky’s apartment, leaning on each other’s shoulders in the back seat, the sadness of so many goodbyes begins to fade away in favor of contentment, and excitement.

RJ is there when Bucky opens the door, and he is immediately tackled almost entirely off of his feet by possibly the most enthusiastic show of affection he’s ever received from this nineteen-year-old he loves so much.

“Congratulations!” RJ gushes after the initial burbling of greetings and affection between himself and Bucky. He even hugs _Steve_ , which is unprecedented for RJ, a guy who absolutely does not show physical affection to people he doesn’t know very well.

And Bucky should probably wait for a bit, let the feelings mellow out a little, or figure out what he wants to actually say, but he can’t. He can’t wait. So while Steve goes to put their suitcases in the bedroom, Bucky sits RJ down on the couch to ask him a question.

“Kid,” he begins as RJ gives him a confused, slightly wary look, “I never told you this, but when you first moved in here, when you were fifteen, I was working up to asking you if you’d want me to adopt you.”

RJ’s eyebrows shoot up to his hairline, and his eyes widen comically.

“I know you wanted emancipation — to be independent — and I’m really glad you got that, but I never stopped feeling like you were mine, and I was yours. I think of you as my son, and I want you to have the stability of knowing that. And if all you want is to hear that from me, that’s fine, but I would be absolutely _thrilled_ if you wanted to be my kid for real. How do you feel about me legally adopting you now?”

RJ just blinks for a moment, clearly stunned. Bucky’s heart pounds, and he waits.

Finally, RJ opens his mouth. “Why?” he asks, breathless. “I’m nineteen.”

Bucky smiles. “There are a lot of reasons why an adult might be adopted,” he says. “Sometimes for inheritance, or next-of-kin purposes. I just want to make something official that I’ve been feeling for the last four years. If you want it, too.”

RJ blinks for another few seconds. But then, a slow smile spreads across his face.

“Yeah,” he says finally, and Bucky’s heart swells. “Yeah, I’d like that.”

🎈

Thankfully, RJ also agrees to move into Steve’s old room, after Bucky assures him a few times that he can afford it because Steve is moving in with _him_ , and will be paying half his rent now, and that Steve won’t be paying RJ’s rent, or anything like that. RJ would never be okay with that.

It’s only partly a lie. Pretty much as soon as they got home, Steve and Bucky already opened a joint bank account, and have been in the process of merging their finances as a married couple ever since. So for all intents and purposes, it kind of _will_ be like Steve is just continuing to pay his old rent, and Bucky has just gone from two rents down to one.

On the day they move all of Steve’s stuff out, and all of RJ’s stuff in, somehow everyone ends up back at Bucky and Steve’s place (now _their_ place, and not just Bucky’s!) sharing way too many pizzas, and hopefully _not_ too many beers for the grownups. The kids end up in the kitchen at some point, where Kate is holding court telling some story while Billy and Teddy lovingly heckle her. Bucky was thrilled to return home to find Billy doing so much better than he was when they left, and also to find that RJ has gotten pretty close with the three other kids in the kitchen with him. That he genuinely considers them his _friends_ now. Bucky can’t remember RJ ever calling anyone except himself his friend before, and he had to try very hard to pretend he didn’t want to cry the first time RJ casually dropped the term in conversation regarding Billy, Teddy, and Kate.

Out in the living room, Steve, Sam, and Nat are splayed over each other across the couch, talking and laughing just like always. But Bucky has drifted over to his piano. He’s just tired enough, just happy enough, and had just the right number of beers, that he doesn’t hesitate to open the fallboard and let the tips of his fingers rest over the keys.

He takes a breath.

And begins to play.

It’s nothing too terribly difficult. A Tom Waits song that he’s always loved, and that he can’t seem to get out of his head when he thinks about Steve. But it feels… _good_. To be playing again. To allow something inside his chest to flow out through his fingers and become melodic sound.

Bucky feels brand new, but he’s the same. He’s always been this — been _him_. He never thought he was good enough. Never thought he deserved to feel this light. This happy. But now he understands. He was wrong. He was so fucking wrong.

And it’s not perfect. He hasn’t magically transformed into someone who is fully healed. His trauma is still there, and sometimes his mind is crowded with negative thoughts that he still has trouble climbing out of. But he knows, now, and eventually, in those dark moments, he remembers:

He’s worthy of a life filled with joy.

And he has one.

He really, truly does.

It isn’t until the song is over that Bucky realizes all of the voices in his home have died down. He looks around to four grinning faces peering out of his kitchen, two soft smiles from his sofa, and one beautiful, entranced expression from the love of his life right behind him.

Maybe, in any other moment, Bucky would feel embarrassed, or bashful, at all of this attention leveled at him. But right now, as Steve pulls him up off of the piano bench to wrap his arms around Bucky’s waist and hold him close, Bucky lets his arms loop around Steve’s shoulders, and all he feels is happy.

Happy, and so _incredibly_ loved.

“Buck,” Steve breathes in awe, but that’s all he says.

Bucky smiles dazzlingly up at his husband, his savior, his partner, his friend. “Oh, haven’t you heard?” he asks, his grin splitting his face. “I’m _amazing!_ ”

And as Steve laughs and kisses Bucky, deep and tender and so, so happy, and Bucky hums into Steve’s mouth and melts in his arms, the thought occurs to him that maybe, in the presence of this man, who loves Bucky just as much as Bucky loves him, he really could be.

Maybe he really is.

🎈

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [Bucky is playing Tom Waits' "Picture in a Frame" on his piano](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fphxDPTV2Bw), which is also the song he was thinking about while gazing lovingly at Steve way back in chapter 12. _"I love you, baby, and I always will."_
> 
> **Next time:**   
> 


	27. Epilogue: Four Years Later

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is it. We did it! We've come to the end of our story, and I could not be more grateful to everyone who has been involved in this fic coming to its fruition, and to you, who read this whole thing.
> 
> Here, at the end of ~~all things~~ this story, I would like to point you towards the sweet little text just below the tags that now designates this story as "Part 1 of the The Little Red Balloon series." That's right, y'all, there's more to come! I have plans for some appendices, where I can show you some of the behind-the-scenes stuff that went into this story, including elements of Bucky's wardrobe, a thorough timeline of events, and the floorplans I drew up for Bucky's, and Steve's and Sam's apartments. NOT ONLY THAT, but edits for this story lead to MANY ideas for companion and sequel oneshots. I'm not ready to say goodbye to these boys. If you aren't either, go ahead and subscribe to the series. More is on its way.
> 
> Before we go, I just want to thank everyone individually again. Please indulge me a little sappiness as I emotionally end this out.
> 
> [Di (ArtDiwey)](https://twitter.com/ArtDiwey): I cannot tell you how happy I am that you picked my story! The art you've created for this has been absolutely stunning, in ways I can't even articulate, and seeing you bring my words to life has been an honor and a joy!! Not only that, but I am so so happy that working together has lead to a friendship that I hope and believe will continue on now that our work is complete! You are lovely, and your work is amazing, and I am so deliriously happy to know you and have worked with you! THANK YOU for everything you've done in this collaboration. Not just the art, but the support and enthusiasm you've given me, too! ❤️
> 
> [Bones (fingerprintbruises)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/fingerprintbruises): WHAT DO I EVEN SAY TO YOU?? I am not exaggerating when I say that your work beta'ing this fic with me has been INSTRUMENTAL in making the story we have now. You've challenged me, put up with my insanely specific opinions on word choice, indulged my stylistic choices and corrected them when they've been too strong to make sense, cheered me on when I was struggling, helped me make decisions about plot changes when they were needed, and been my wonderful, lovely friend both inside and outside this project. I love our thirst hours, our shared terrible sleep schedules, and you. One of the best things that came out of this big bang for me was making friends with you. I LOVED working with you on this. You already know that your tribute is in this epilogue. 😂 Thank you thank you thank you! ❤️
> 
> The (N)ASBB mods - [brideofquiet](https://archiveofourown.org/users/brideofquiet), [corarochester](https://archiveofourown.org/users/CoraRochester), [deisderium](https://archiveofourown.org/users/deisderium), [spacerenegades](https://archiveofourown.org/users/crinklefries), [steebadore](https://archiveofourown.org/users/steebadore), and [venusmonstrosa](https://archiveofourown.org/users/VenusMonstrosa): Thank you for making and running this bang. This has been my very first big bang experience, and my first experience in this particular fandom, and it has been my personal saving grace over the last six incredibly difficult months. Thank you for the support, the encouragement, the bullying, and all of the incredible work you have done to make this a positive experience for all of us. It was. It very, very much was!
> 
> SO MANY thanks also to [need_more_meta](https://archiveofourown.org/users/need_more_meta) and [bicappy](https://twitter.com/bicappytweets) for your work making this fic better, more accurate, and more sensitive. I cannot overstate how grateful I am to you. And thank you to everyone in the (N)ASBB Discord server, you all have been so supportive, you are all so talented, and I have adored talking to you all over the last six months!
> 
> And lastly, thanks to you, the reader, for taking a chance and spending your time on this long, sometimes dark, emotional fic. This fic is my baby, and my heart is on this metaphorical page. Thank you for your time, your comments, and your love. I love you back! ❤️❤️❤️

🎈

FOUR YEARS LATER

“Honey?” Steve calls back into the bedroom. “You almost ready?”

Bucky comes blustering out into the living room looking both irritated and frazzled. His hair is…everywhere, and one side of his collar is sticking straight up. He has no tie, and no shoes, and he kind of looks like he just got caught in a tornado, even though he spent the last hour in the bath, getting a head massage from his husband before his big night, and the entire hour before that with Steve’s face buried in his ass, his hand in Steve’s hair, being slowly brought to orgasm. Twice.

“I can’t do it, you need to do it,” Bucky huffs, shoving a few various hair ties and bobby pins, and a leave-in conditioner spray into Steve’s hands, and then immediately walking toward the couch.

He looks back expectantly when Steve doesn’t follow him right away, so Steve laughs, and follows him.

Steve has done Bucky’s hair probably fifteen thousand times in the almost four years they’ve been married now, so he knows to settle back on the deep couch cushions, and spread his knees wide to make room for Bucky to sit down between them. He also knows to spray the leave-in conditioner on his hand, not directly onto Bucky’s hair, and then work it through Bucky’s beautiful curls with his fingers.

“How do you want it?” Steve asks, while Bucky instantly relaxes at the feeling of Steve’s fingers in his hair. If he could, Steve thinks that Bucky’d just instantly start purring every time he does this.

“Kind of loosely half-up, maybe?” Bucky answers. “But with some curls left hanging in the front.”

“Got it,” Steve replies, and gets to work doing Bucky’s hair.

“Who’s coming tonight?” Bucky asks again. He’s already asked this three times in the past two days, but he’s forgotten every time Steve has told him. He’s very nervous, and it’s very endearing, and Steve is happy to keep answering the same questions over and over if Bucky needs him to.

“Tony and Pepper are already there,” Steve starts listing. “Tony texted me a few minutes ago, he’s scoping out our table, and Pepper’s already schmoozing with Sharon, who also got there early. So did, by the way, _all_ of the Commandos, and apparently they’re at Sharon’s table, next to ours, which Tony finds hilarious. Sam and Nat are gonna come here, and we’re all taking a car over there together.”

“Sam and Nat are _both_ coming?” Bucky asks, apparently genuinely not remembering any of this.

“Yeah, honey, it’s your big night,” Steve responds, starting to braid the top layer of Bucky’s hair. He’ll wrap this braid into a bun at the back of his head and pin it there when he’s done. “It’s not like people we know receive humanitarian awards every month, this is huge, Buck.”

Bucky huffs again, but he doesn’t deny it.

Steve could not be more proud of his husband. In the last four years, ever since they got back from defeating Hydra for good (there haven’t even been any _attempts_ at a resurgence), Bucky has been working tirelessly on a program with the LGBTQ center he works with, that provides mental health services and tangible resources to queer victims of violence, at no cost to them. He even expanded it into a program that specifically assists kidnapping victims, just last year. It all runs on donations, and it’s been absolutely thriving.

Sharon Carter, the center’s founder — and the woman Bucky was in hysterics to learn was the very same Sharon Carter who Steve briefly dated before he remembered she was Peggy’s cousin years ago — made Bucky her partner last year, and now he’s half responsible for running the entire shelter. And on top of all of that, a prominent LGBTQ foundation heard about Bucky’s work in the community, and invited him to their annual gala to receive their prestigious humanitarian award, along with a hefty grant for the programs he’s created.

Bucky cried when he got the letter. It definitely would have ranked as his favorite news of the week, except that the next day, RJ asked if Bucky would be okay with him changing his middle name to James. ‘RJ’ had been the initials of his deadname, and he’d always intended on keeping them, likes being called RJ. And, years after leaving his abusive family, as far as he or anyone else was concerned, the initials didn’t stand for anything, they were just his name. But he recently decided he wanted to legally change his name, including finally officially taking Barnes as his surname. He’d chosen Robert for the R, and he wanted, as he put it, to ‘middle name himself after his dad.’

Bucky cried a _lot_ at that.

“RJ’s coming, right?” Bucky asks, either on the same train of thought as Steve, or fully reading his mind. Steve wouldn’t be surprised either way, honestly. Bucky is the most incredible person Steve has ever known, if he suddenly developed telepathy, that would just be par for the course, as far as Steve is concerned.

“Yeah, sweetheart,” Steve tells him, pausing in his hair-doing duties for just long enough to press a soft kiss to the side of Bucky’s sweet neck. “Your son’s gonna be there. We’re picking him up from campus on the way, remember?” RJ is in college part time now, and will be going straight from his last class of the day to Bucky’s big night.

“Honestly, sunshine, I don’t,” Bucky sighs with a short, breathy laugh, “but I believe you.”

“Carol’s bringing Maria and Monica, too,” Steve continues, “and Clint is in town, so he’s coming. And Dasha’s staying with your parents while she’s in New York, so she’ll be there, and Teddy, Billy, and Kate—”

There’s a knock on the door.

“And, of course, your sister, Sipho, and your parents,” Steve finishes through a grin. Then, “It’s open!” he calls toward the door.

Becca’s head pokes in, and she grins. “Hey!” she says, coming all the way inside. “Mom, Dad, and Sipho are gonna take their own car, none of them are ready yet,” she explains before anyone even asks her why she’s here alone. She plops down on the chair near the sofa and adds to Bucky, “And Shuri texted me to say you’re not answering your phone, and she, T’Challa, and Auntie Ramonda want to tell you congratulations.”

“Oh, shit,” Bucky says, “I left my phone in the bathroom.”

“Go get it,” Steve tells him, putting both hands on either side of his head to tilt it back and plant a kiss on the crown of it. “I’m done here.”

Bucky turns around, and gives Steve a quick kiss on his lips in thanks before rushing off toward the bedroom.

Steve looks over at Becca, who waves him off.

“Steve,” she says, “I love you, and I’d be happy to chat, but your husband, my brother looks like he’s about to stick his finger in a light socket or something, and ever since you married him, that’s _your_ job.”

She clicks her tongue against her back teeth, and jerks her thumb over her shoulder. Steve laughs, and shakes his head, but does as Becca says, and follows Bucky.

Bucky is in the bathroom, talking softly on the phone, so Steve sits down at the foot of their bed and waits for him, listening happily as he laughs at whatever his Wakandan family is saying to him.

When he emerges a few minutes later, Bucky is smiling, and looking just _slightly_ less frazzled. Slightly.

Then he sees Steve, and frowns.

“So wait,” Bucky says, “how are Sam and Nat _both_ coming to an evening event?”

“They got a babysitter,” Steve says slowly, like he’s explaining a brand new concept to Bucky. “So their baby will be looked after while they’re both out of the house.”

Bucky glares at Steve, and tugs at his own collar. “Where’s my tie?” he mutters to himself, and then walks back into the bathroom.

Steve picks up the tie from where it’s lying on the bed next to him, and holds it up so that when Bucky comes back out of the bathroom again, his searching eyes land on it in Steve’s hand.

“Oh,” is all he says, reaching for it, but Steve pulls it out of his reach.

“Let me do it?” he asks gently.

Bucky sighs, but sits down next to Steve to let him tie his bowtie.

Instead of doing that right away, though, Steve places the bowtie back down on the bed, and wraps his arms around Bucky.

He half expects Bucky to complain, or to stiffen in his arms, with the mood he seems to be in. But instead, Bucky releases a heavy exhale, and hugs Steve right back, burying his face in Steve’s neck.

“You really don’t have to be nervous,” Steve murmurs. “You’re being honored. It’s a party for you.”

“I have to make a speech,” Bucky groans, muffled in Steve’s shoulder.

“You’ve made speeches before,” Steve points out.

“Not to fancy people.”

“But _you’re_ a fancy people tonight.”

“Lies.”

Steve rumbles a laugh, and then pulls out the big guns. There is one guaranteed way to make Bucky laugh.

Steve starts to sing.

“‘ _And I will take you in my arms,_ ’” he begins to warble, badly, and off-key, ignoring when Bucky whines a loud complaint into his neck, just tightening his hold around his husband, “‘ _and hold you right where you belong_.’”

“ _Steve!_ ” Bucky wails, lifting his head and letting it fall back on his shoulders pitifully.

Steve isn’t done. “‘ _Till the day my life is through, this I promise you!_ ’” he keeps singing in his best ‘90s boy band nasal. “‘ _This I pro_ — _mmlph_.’”

He’s abruptly cut off by Bucky’s lips slamming into his to shut him the hell up, as Bucky giggles helplessly into the kiss.

And it worked. Bucky laughs, and when he pulls back from their smushing kiss, he’s still smiling. He cradles his hand against Steve’s jaw.

“Thank you,” he murmurs. “I love you so much, you know that?”

“I do know that,” Steve confirms, leaning in to kiss Bucky’s mouth lightly again. “You know that I love you so much, too?”

Bucky grins, and nods. There was a time when Steve wasn’t sure that was true. When he wasn’t sure that, even if he did know how much Steve has always loved him, Bucky trusted that that would always be true. But now, after four wonderful years together, learning, and loving, and growing side by side, Steve can look at Bucky, and _know_. Bucky knows how much Steve loves him, and he knows that will be true for the rest of forever.

And it will.

Steve picks up Bucky’s bowtie, and starts to tie it around his neck, as Bucky watches him with immeasurable love in his eyes.

Later tonight, Steve will watch his husband, the man he loves more than anything else in the whole entire world, stand up on a stage and accept an award that he more than deserves. And Bucky will thank Steve in his speech, calling him his rock, his heart, his home, and the love of his life. And Steve will cry, and he’ll laugh, and Bucky will kiss him the moment he walks offstage, to cheers from the audience.

And later still, when they’re home together and tipsy on champagne, the pieces of their tuxedos scattered in a breadcrumb trail through the living room to the bedroom, Steve will stare down into Bucky’s eyes as they gasp into each other’s mouths, hands everywhere, moving together as one as they take each other apart, just like they have over and over before.

But right now, as he finishes tying his beautiful, wonderful, amazing husband’s bowtie, Steve just leans forward, and kisses Bucky with all the love he can’t contain inside of him. And he thinks, right now, about the man he saw across a bar four and change years ago. A man who thought he was temporary, and transient like a balloon. And Steve thinks about how he never, in his wildest dreams, could have thought up this man here before him. With all of his strength, his grace, his kindness. His silliness, his crankiness, his beauty. His hopes, dreams, fears, pain, his sorrow, his laughter, his joy.

Steve never could have imagined someone as magnificent as James Buchanan Rogers-Barnes. But here he is, sharing with Steve his name, and his home, and his life.

Steve never thought he’d ever love someone as much as he loves Bucky.

And Bucky loves him, too.

And that, Steve thinks — with that picture of their past sitting in its silver frame on the mantle of the home they share, and their future ahead of them, the end of the line still a long, long ways off — is all that really matters in the end.

And he’s _thrilled_.

THE END

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ❤️🎈❤️
> 
> Please let me know what you think! And come say hi to me on twitter at [@apblaidd](https://twitter.com/apblaidd)!


End file.
